Wireless Wonders

My blog has moved...

2007-02-14T06:59:00.000-08:00

My blog has moved to here - http://blog.wirelesswanders.com/

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Things to do with kids, Play Dough and Blackberry...

2006-11-24T14:03:00.000-08:00

Turn it into a Strawberry (we couldn't resist).

Mobile fiddling...(idea #107)

2006-11-22T16:28:00.000-08:00

I think it was Jakob Nielsen who first identified (in one of the earliest WAP usability field trials) that a great "use" for mobile phones (actually for WAP) was killing time. It is hard not to notice that anywhere you go where there are people sitting waiting, they are usually fiddling with their mobile phone. Of course, some of this "fiddling" is actually doing stuff, like sending messages, cleaning up the folders, and so on. Other times it's adjusting anything that can be adjusted - ring tones, wallpapers, themes etc.

I've done it many times myself - take out my phone, even though I have no new messages or calls or any other change brought to my attention, and just start fiddling with it. Some people just like touching their phone, spinning it round and so on - that's supposedly why Motorola made the PEBL - something with a satisfying touch, just like a real pebble.

However, on close inspection (i.e peeking) at what some people do with their phones, the fiddling is a kind of mindless playing around - poking, changing, reverting back, going up and down menus, swapping settings back and forth, and so on - plain fiddling about. We like to tell kids not to fiddle with things - the remote control, the car controls, the radio, the computer. We often then go and do it ourselves (which doesn't mean the kids can too!) It seems we are born to fiddle. No doubt, psychologists, mobile ergonomists (human factors?) and other ologists know what this is all about and I'm slow to catch up, but I think they may have missed something.

I wonder, have we fully embraced this fiddling-thingy within mobile design, or are we treating it as an exception? In other words, do we think that only idle hands (and fingers) want to fiddle, so give them a game like Snake, or a news feed to the home page, and endless other variants of "time killer" apps (including Nielsen's "nothing better to do" WAP browsing, which it still as tedious as it ever was). Or, should we literally make it easier and give more options for simply fiddling around with the phone (the UI is the app)? I think that a UI designed for fiddling would be a different one that a UI designed for task-driven interaction. We could have two UIs. A playing around one (in pink - the new black) and a doing-stuff one (in the usual doing-stuff palette). Of course, that probably breaks all the UI and usability "rules", which is why it's probably an idea worth exploring.

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The dialler application

2006-11-20T14:11:00.000-08:00

In my book and some workshops, I give an anatomy of a mobile phone. A bit of modem here, an operating system there, a sprinkle of APIs, MIDP sauce and so on. I include a "dialler application", which is not often found on the average handset block diagram. It's the thingy that takes numbers from the user and passes them to the "call processor" software wotsit, which in turn invokes a protocol stack to go send a "set-up call" message to the switch in the mobile network. Incrediblty boring, mundane and obvious. So obvious, that it doesn't often get a mention in the block diagram/handset overview in many (most) treatments of the subject. Is this perhaps why it is so lacking in innovation? After all, it's a dialler - it takes numbers and green-button pushes and does its stuff. Why tinker with this?

Telco marketers have come up with grand gestures of customer satisfaction like the theme of "connecting people" (it has its variants). However, about the only parameter they fiddle around with is the billing arrangement - call home all weekend for free and so on. When I dial a number, why can't I get useful info about the number I'm dialling? For example, the rating of this plumber on plumber-pages-dot-com [don't look - I made that up], or the time zone of the person I'm calling (good for all those Indian/US/Euro projects)?

It's framing again (or paradigms). My daughter asked me today "what's 'old school' mean?" - to which I should have replied green push buttons on phones. Functional thinking is good for programmers, but no good for business people (or "engineers" - who don't make engines anymore, although that word still gets used everywhere, e.g. "speech engine"). What business are operators in? Of course, it's the switching business right? A number here connected to a number there, start the stop watch, stop it and add the number to a bill (I have a great slide that sums up a mobile network like this). OK, by the same functional logic, Google is in the same business. A browser here connected ("switched") to a website there courtesy of the "URL look-up table" (i.e. switch). That's why they charge us for minutes of usage right? No.

I'm reminded of a Parker pens story. It was told to me by my tutor at University. Anyway, I hope the story is true as I've re-told it so many times it feels like a legend. Parker, who make pens and ink, were faltering as a business. This was pre-McKinsey days, but nonetheless they hired a "management consultant" to tell them what to do. (I am not skeptical - I would love to make loads of money doing this.) After a presumably lengthy consultation period with high numbers of noughts on the bill, he merely asked the management board - "what business are you in?" Frustrated by the obviousness of the answer, they replied "pens". He said "no, you're not". They said, "OK, ink?" - "Nope." On it went through a list of functional answers until they gave up in frustration. "The answer" he said, "is that you're in the gift business".

That's an old story and it has now been replaced. In the post-writing age (emails, keyboards, pdas etc.) luxury pens as gifts isn't such a great idea. According to the latest market study for Parker (which I found on Google, so it must be true) they are now in the "accessory" business - things we might want to own ourselves, just like expensive wines have become desirable. What business are operators in now?

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who's left me a message? (idea #106)

2006-11-10T11:10:00.000-08:00

People like me often get missed calls. For a number of reasons, I can't or don't always answer my mobile. Eventually a bank of voicemails builds up. One of the most tedious mobile experiences ("anti-experience"?) is the laborious wading through a talking voicemail service - "you have seven new messages and ....... [there's always a a pause here]..... four saved messages". Of course, I already know that because I just got a text message telling me the same thing, so why do I need to hear the same message?

What my voicemail fails to do is tell me who any of the messages are from so that I can jump straight to their message. Is this so difficult? It would be nice to jump straight to a message I want or need to hear because it's from a customer (or the boss (wife) of course). Yes, I know you can skip through messages, but please don't make me do that. Do I have to skip through the first few seconds of each CD or DVD track to get to the one I want? No. Today's mobiles are sophisticated tiny computers with mulitple keys, menus and various other interface capabilities, so why are we still in "linear tape recording" mode for voicemail? That's why! It's a recording, so we have to stick with old recording metaphors. Please Google, Apple, someone...rescue us from this Telco -2.0 drudge.

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urgent calls indicator (idea #105)

2006-11-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

When I hold workshops for operators I divide value-added services into basic categories. One category - usually the first - is "enhanced voice". It seems to me an amazing feat that after nearly two decades of mobile telephony (and over a century of regular telephony) we are still stuck with the same basic voice features we started with - dial a number and hit a green button.

In my earlier posting about downloadable ring tones within the ring tone selector app itself, one commentator pointed out that this is exactly what MSN Messenger does today, which is true (with downloadable winks). Many things are already done well on the Internet, but in the so-called "Mobile Internet" the good stuff seldom seems to port across. For example, when I send an email I can mark it as urgent. This, of course, is an old idea carried over from the "snail mail" world - the red "urgent" stamp on the front of the envelope.

I have yet to see the "urgent button" for making a phone call. It seems an obvious thing to offer callers. A callee could control how urgent calls get processed, but at least they would get the option of knowing that a call is urgent. Marking anything urgent is always open to abuse (although I think that the "urgent email" fad has worn off in companies as many users have matured in their discretionary use of such tools). In some cases, it might be an idea to have the handling of urgent calls subject to a corporate policy framework. For example, it might be made difficult to "ignore" urgent calls from a particular number (which might be useful for parent-child relationships too).

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auto reverse-charging (idea #104)

2006-11-10T10:33:00.000-08:00

In the UK, and lots of other markets, the calling party pays (except when calling a roaming mobile, when the charge is shared). It would be great to set up relationships between callers so that the called party can nominate to pay the charges. This might work well between adults and kids - not necessarily parents and siblings, but any adult-child relationship where the adult is happy to pick up the bill for the call.

As per my last posting, it would be great to control this feature via the "addess book" itself (or whatever we're going to replace it with once we get over the book metaphor) and not some tedious meandering through a portal. Simply applying an attribute to a person in the book means that I get to pay the call charges both ways automatically. The same feature would be useful for paying roaming charges too. Calling a prepay user overseas can rapidly deplete their call credits.

The sharing of payment is a great idea generally and there are a number of variants on the theme. I'm glad to see that some markets allow the trading of minutes between friends, which is especially useful to the youth.

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Game boy in the pocket experience (idea #103)

2006-11-09T22:35:00.000-08:00

All my kids have Nintendo DS lite - in all colours (black, white and pink). I watch as they struggle to force them into their trouser pockets. I'm still adamant that garment design isn't keeping up with technological habits. My older brother still pokes fun at my techno "clothing ideas" (remember the socks?) so I felt duly compelled to announce my latest thinking in this untapped fashion arena.

Firstly, trousers need console pockets - this is clear. However, what a console really needs is a top screen too to announce the ongoing progress of "evolving" games, like Nintendog. If a dog needs feeding as it's about to die, this should at the very least cause the console to vibrate, but better still announce a small message on a top screen on the closed device. Consoles need to follow mobiles and have a top screen. This would then require a pocket with a transparent portion to allow top-screen viewing.

Now this leads to my latest thinking in men's apparel. With phones like the Motorola KRZR now reaching very thing, light and slender proportions, they should be easy to "wear" on the sleeve in a tiny outside pocket (I will submit a drawing as soon as I get my new tablet connected). With a landscape view of the top screen, it would be possible to view the screen just like reading a watch. Now, does that mean we need tacky clear-plastic inserts in our sleeves to see the screen? I'm sure that with the right mix of thin (but durable) material and a bright enough display, it would be possible to see right through a veneer of material snuggly wrapped over the device. Paris fashion show beckons!

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Ring tone experience (idea #102)

2006-11-09T21:59:00.000-08:00

I recently sat in a cafe and watched a teenaged boy take his brand new phone out of its box, insert the battery and start "playing" with it. Not surprisingly, before long we could all here an array of ring tunes whistling their merry way across the cafe. Ring tones have come a long way - they weren't nearly so annoying as they might have been, even with a constant switching from one 5 second blast to another (and back again).

Of course, most of us have done this, although usually in the privacy of our own homes - it is a natural part of exploring a new phone. Let's play the ring tones. I still argue that a tune sequencer would be a great feature on any phone, allowing musical loops to be sewn into a unique ring tone, or should that be "tune"? (See my last post.)

In a recent user experience definition I worked on for an MVNO project, the "out of the box" (ootb) experience was a key part of the analysis, as it clearly marks and affects the entry point into the device and the services attached to it. Usually precious little effort is given to the ootb experience and so the initial playing around with the new phone can be a short-lived and quite dull affair. Service discovery is an important part of service design, but often an afterthought, it thought about at all.

In the cafe I observed an ootb experience first hand - the young man became my lab study for a few moments. He fiddled with the ring tones and having exhausted himself of the possibilities (in MTV-speed fashion - i.e. about 1 minute) he duly proceeded to less interesting stuff. I couldn't see what, but it was probably the usual address book boredom, changing a wallpaper and so on.

This was a golden moment to engage him with services. Within the "ring tone application" he could have been offered a number of options that drew him further into the experience and also made the operator some money. The option to download new tones should be built in to the same user interface (UI), not a link somewhere on the operator's WAP portal. Tones should be organised into "play lists" and shareable, reviewable, rate-able, just like an iTunes experience. Moreover, it should be immediately possible to share any of the default tones with another user from within the same UI.

A portal is a single entry point to several services. It make sense to offer a front-door into a set of related services. However, with a mobile phone it already has a multitude of doors, like "ring tone selector", "address book", "call record" and so on. There's no need to make a user go out of these environments and back through a front-door - they're already in the house! Why not put services within these partitions?

I'd probably argue that the whole partitioning of the experience into ancient functions like "address book" doesn't make sense anyway - most users haven't had an address book for the past 5 years anyway, most likely never at all. Why mimic a book on a phone? There are lots of metaphors that could be used to organise people information. As an exercise, I suggest taking a large sheet of paper and drawing an imaginary set of icons on it to resemble a phone interface. However, the rule is that you're not allowed to use any of the traditional icons and names. For example, try putting an icon called "connect". What might it do? If the only options you can think of are "call" and "text", then you probably shouldn't be in value-added services (if that's what you do already). The ootb experience requires some ootb thinking!

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Collaborative Mobile Musical Composing...(idea #101)

2006-10-30T23:51:00.000-08:00

In my household, we now have a Mac Mini as a "home entertainment" system for the sitting room. We discovered the really exciting Garage Band application for composing/recoding music. Moreover, we hooked it up to our keyboard via the midi port - great for easy composing and the kids are amazed at the conversion of input to a musical score (great for learning music theory).

For even a relative musical novice, it is possible to create enjoyable music using the many musical loops that can be dropped in to a track and moved, stretched, chopped and repeated anywhere along the timeline.

I can well imagine that a mobile version would be fun too, especially on a device with a substantial music synthesis capability. A multi-user version could allow sharing of tracks and collaborative composition. Finished scores could be saved as ringtones, uploaded to blogs (a standard extension to any mobile app - or it ought to be, and remarkably isn't).

Numerous readers of this blog have asked me to continue the "100 Ideas" series, despite still not having released the compiled e-book of the first 100 (I hope coming soon). Therefore, even though I have posted other ideas since the 100th, this is the official 101st idea....and here's looking forward to the 200 mark!

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Personalised caller greetings...

2006-10-10T13:12:00.000-07:00

Ken Brickley from Zeacom told me about his great new service for personalised greetings - I'd love to have this on my phone and I think the youth will love it too! (Which is me of course.)

Here's Ken's intro to the service:

"For the first time, you can have a professional greeting for your clients, a gooey message for your flame and a curt one for your X. In fact, you can record a unique greeting for virtually anyone who calls your cell phone. All other callers receive your regular greeting.

Early ‘GenY’ trial users of YouMail value the ability to express their individuality in creative voice greetings to close friends and family while presenting a more professional greeting to unknown missed calls that are increasingly work related.

An advanced feature of YouMail, coined “Ditchmail” by the female members of an early focus group, which allows users to record a custom greeting that actually hangs up on an unwanted caller immediately after the greeting is played. Available to US-based mobile subscribers on Cingular, Verizon and T-Mobile, YouMail boasts an online unified voice portal where users can access and save messages indefinitely and forward important voicemails via email."

Service is free during the beta. Check it out at www.youmail.com.

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Wind-up Mobile phone Charger with flashlight

2006-10-09T07:15:00.000-07:00


Wind-up Mobile phone Charger with flashlight Is this the cutting edge of mobile accessories. Great ad (or is it a wind-up)?

Mobile IM - is it really IM?

2006-10-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

I've been using MIM this past week - an embedded client and a Java client, trying both out for size. It's Wireless Village stuff - OMA IMPS standard for the technical - which means a protocol aimed specifically at wireless devices. The server has a peering connection with Google Talk and I'm just waiting for an MSN client so that I can also use MSN.

Now, there are reports around that when users come up against a mobile version of MSN or Yahoo (or other desktop IM services), they rapidly run out of enthusiasm for the venture. Why? Well, suddenly IM becomes not so instant. Moreover, multiple conversations - which youthful users are accustomed to - just don't happen on a mobile (the interface can't do it very well, or at all).

When IM-ing with deskbound buddies, I found the disparity obvious. Fairly long and rapid responses versus my pithy and slowly typed bullet points (and yes - I can use predictive text quite well).

Positioning here is that this is mobile IM and therefore it is IM on the phone, which it clearly isn't - the experience is quite different. However, when it comes to swapping pings with another mobile buddy, it's a different story. It's like texting, but better. There's presence to see if the buddy is online, which texting doesn't have. There's a chat session visible on the screen, which texting also doesn't have (as texting interfaces almost always assume "fire-and-forget", not a session).

Let's see how Three's huge promotion of Mobile MSN Messenger works out - "free for life" (if you pay for a beefy tariff of course).

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The raw end of mobile retailing...

2006-10-03T15:06:00.000-07:00

People like me sit in offices and dream up "mobile solutions". In the retail outlet shops they sell mobiles. Mostly, these two worlds are poles apart. There is little attempt to sell services to customers. It is almost impossible to experience these services anyway, except, perhaps, in UK Three stores where they have connected phones on display. I did ask the Three rep to show me how to access Gmail on the phone (he said "we support Gmail", which, apparently, they do). After about 20 presses of keys, fumbling around, he uttered something that was intended to bluff me off the topic (him not knowing that I know my stuff in this particular field).

I ventured onto the T-Mobile website to find out more about "Instant Email", which is what I'm looking for. After too many attempts to figure out which devices truly supported push email, I ended up trying to price a Blackberry (which I know supports push email). On one page it talked about 10 per month for email traffic. When trying to put the device in the shopping basket, this amount didn't appear. I wasn't sure if it was included in the bolt-on voice/text tariff or not. Then there was an offer of unlimited internet surfing on another page, which I couldn't find in the shopping basket at all. Not surprisingly, I gave up. There was another page talking about blogging, which I'm interested in, but no mention of how to get it.

A guy walked into a mobile retail outlet and stood next to me (I was making my usual sanity-check visit to the sharp end of mobile - where the consumers go to buy the stuff!) A staff member offered assistance and the shopper replied "well, you know, my contract has ended and I'm trying to decide should I switch supplier, which phone to get - but you know it's hard to figure out what to do". The assistant replied "yes, confusing isn't it".

We seem to have a problem. Operators want all these differentiating services to bump up their revenues, but don't seem to know how to sell them when they get them. Innovation in my dull world of service creation needs to be matched with some innovation in the glitzy end of retailing where all this stuff ends up. The other day I walked into Vision Express, thinking it was a mobile shop. I have trouble now distinguishing between the two - wall to wall sameness and staff who whilst they try to help, can only really offer a smile and take the order once the poor shopper has flipped a coin.

Does mobile retailing have to be this bad?

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Quick update on mishing...

2006-09-27T22:54:00.000-07:00

Phew! - mishing doesn't appear to be a rude word, but it is a group of people. It is also used as a mushy way of say missing - as in "I'm mishing you". I love it - that seems like a good name then for mobile swishing via NFC!

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Swapping and swishing...

2006-09-27T22:30:00.000-07:00

Swapping stuff is ages old. We swap things all the time. There used to be a great kids breakfast show on Saturdays in the UK called Swapshop (The host was Noel Edmonds, who now writes books about self-improvement: definitely not on my swap list, but My Blobby videos are a must have for kids (Blobby himself last seen in myspaces). The nostlagic could always use the theme tune as a ringtone.)

Swapping mobile content needs to be made easier. The obvious one is contacts, but I suspect that many youths will want to swap photos - "here's my gig last night!" or "me with Mr Cool" - and let's hope not trophies from happy slapping. We need NFC! No. Not Nirvana Fan Club, but Near-field Communication: chips in our mobiles that can speak to each other when placed within mutual proximity (about 4 cm). A quick swish and we could swap stuff in a jiffy. No doubt, swishing will become mishing or mashing or moshing, or some other slang word - let's hope I coin them all and claim the credit. (I still say I invented the term mobilist, not that it's important - it didn't make me any money!)

Mishing (I hope that's not a rude word) would be a great way to do the social network tagging I mentioned in a recent post. A quick mish and I have your Linkedin or myspaces links safely tucked away in my mobile, automatically sychronised of course to a list of faves in Firefox (or Flock probably).

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Sony Mylo is where we're headed...

2006-09-26T00:27:00.000-07:00

Sony's Mylo is a really interesting device. I believe that these larger format keyboard-based devices are the future (the present!). It's a no-brainer really, especially if you're already a DS or PSP user. I remember working on early wireless PDA solutions and there was always this debate about size - does anyone really want to carry a large device? The issue is framing again. Adults thinking about mobile phones, size is important - slim, smaller, sleeker. PDAs seem like bricks. But for kids who carry a DS - which they do - then the comparison isn't with mobiles anymore, nor about size - it's all about what can this thing do and how "cool" it does it. Mylo brings all those increasingly can't-do-without Internet services into the "carry with me" space, NOT the mobile phone space.

I like the Mylo's What's Up screen - shows who's online. The interface looks great. I've been waiting for someone to take the UI out of its mundane "must be like a phone" design. The UI on the DS is simply fantastic, as one would expect from a company concerned solely with graphics. It simply makes the thing a joy to use - why can't a mobile be like that? I was expecting Apple to be there, but that remains a now boring speculation.

My two eldest kids use a DS and they also are starting to use mobiles - they borrow one of my many (they like the Razr). However, I was thinking that what I really ought to get them as their "first mobile" is something more like a Blackberry as it opens up messaging, including email. Problem is it isn't kid friendly - the only game is brick and even I can play that! However, it occurs to me that going straight to mobile for email is a possibility for a lot of kids in the future - simply never bother with a PC. Why not? Devices designed like a Mylo tend to suggest this isn't such a fantastical idea as I first thought.

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Ajit's news book...

2006-09-25T12:50:00.000-07:00

Just got my copy of Ajit's new book - Mobile Web 2.0. Will post a review soon...
Thanks Ajit for the copy.

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Fourth places?

2006-09-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

Howard Schultz, of Starbucks fame, didn't come up with the phrase "Third Place" - he just gave us a lot of them to hang out in. Ray Oldenburg wrote about this topic and its importance in civic life. A short overview is on Wikipedia . Personally, I would be tempted to talk of cyberspace meeting points, like Second Life, as a fourth place because it has a very different time-space dynamic than a physical third place, especially when taking into account the possibility of perpetual access via mobile. I haven't seen Starbucks turn up yet in Second Life, but probably will soon. At least when travelling in cyberspace, location-based services will work with hyper-accuracy. I wonder if there should be a cross-over though - if I post a message about Starbucks lousy chai tea latte (it seems the most inconsistently made drink they offer) in the virtual store, will it make its way to the physical one?

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WiFi enabled car...

2006-09-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

Contrary to my previous post about car kits for mobile music (including ipods), I realised a simpler solution, at least it seems simpler. Why not allow the car radio to sync with my music library via WiFi? Every night it could "wake-up" and download any new tracks from my PC via WiFi, then I don't have to mess around with any devices.

Of course, DRM protection of the music is a potential problem, but not an insurmountable one. Not sure about other houses, but certainly my car on my drive is within the WiFi hotspot around my home.

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Social Networking with a Mobile...

2006-09-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

With all the various networking tools (e.g. Linked In) and other ways to interact with each other via the Web, it seems an obvious idea to extend this to the mobile. It would be great to allow swapping of "business cards" via Bluetooth, which is already possible, but to allow Web services to tag themselves on to the card. For example, if I'm in Linked In, then by swapping a business card with another Linked In user, the Linked In service would be able to detect this swap and make a link. An app on the phone could detect business cards and pass this up to a network service which does the necessary "registration" with Linked In.

The idea need not be limited to swapping via Bluetooth. Users who connect via any means, such as IM, could swap cards.

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100 ideas e-book coming soon...

2006-09-14T01:42:00.000-07:00

Apologies to those still waiting for the e-book of the 100 ideas. It's in the pipeline. I want to add notes to the original postings in light of any developments in the industry or further reflections, so it isn't just a cut-and-paste from my blog. I anticipate finishing this by end of October.

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Mobiles and Car Radios

2006-09-13T12:24:00.000-07:00

I recently bought a Harman Kardon - Drive+Play (HKDP) ipod adaptor for my car radio. It works with factory-fitted radios via a wired RF injection, the auxiliary input or via a CD changer interface, if one exists and is compatible. The HKDP has its own user interface, including a thumbwheel that works in a similar fashion to one on the ipod. There's also an external LCD display that can be conveniently located on the dashboard to enabler easier and safer operation. The ipod itself sits on a cable in the glovebox (or nearby wherever the main HKDP "brains unit" is fitted).

It struck me that there don't appear to be any similar adaptors to enable music-capable mobiles to play through the car stereo. In fact, given the fiddly nature of many mobile phones, trying to play music in the car would be a challenge without something like a HKPD with its auxiliary display and thumbwheel.

There needs to be a standard interface to hook up mobile phones with car radios to enable:

1. Music playthrough
2. Easy hands-free operation
3. Use of auxiliary controls (e.g. steering wheel audio controls)
4. Trickle charging

Given the mobile's historical connections with car radios, this seems to be a neglected part of the story in recent years. Perhaps Motorola need to go back to making car radios to show us how it's done - an integrated user experience with the mobile would be nice thanks!

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Orchestrated user experience...

2006-09-05T03:08:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of time for Barbara Ballard. She understands UI issues well. I couldn't agree more with her recent lament about disjointed mobile user experiences:

"And Sprint does not do particularly well, as written by many bloggers recently, in no small part because Sprint’s decisions are frequently dominated by which potential provider makes the best promises. The user experience team is brought in after the supplier relationship and requirements have been finalized. Device manufacturers are not much better. Decisions are made on cost and speed of implementation, and not full user experience."

I don't agree with "requirements have been finalized", although I guess it's a matter of definition. For some, merely expressing the need in a slide for a service is a complete statement of requirements.

An orchestrated user experience seems to be bottom of the list in most mobile services projects. What is seldom appreciated is how critical orchestration is to service adoption, usage and therefore revenue. It's like saying we need a speedometer and a fuel guage to build a car and then sticking the fuel guage in the boot (trunk) because it's easier to put it near the fuel tank. Of course it works, but it's damn inconvenient and frustrating. This example sounds so stupid, right? Believe me - this kind of dissonance exists in many mobile services teams.

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Don't think of an Elephant

2006-08-21T15:04:00.000-07:00

I agree with some of Ajit Joaker's blogging about Mobile Web 2.0. Let me declare that in my rounds of visiting operators and running workshops for them on behalf of a major mobile vendor, I have been promoting "2.0" ideas for the past year. However, the slant I take is more about the transition from the current mobile experience ("1.0") which is all about "dialling to talk" to a relatively new mobile experience, which is "clicking to do" ("2.0"). However, the vehicle for this transition is not the Web, which is why I don't talk about Mobile Web 2.0. The pivot is the buddy list and presence.

"Don't think of an Elephant" is the title of an interesting book by George Lakoff. It's all about framing. The words we use affect how we think about things. Truth is, no one can really define Web 2.0 - it seems to mean all things to all people (with some very strange explanations). In Businessweek it's means those new cool websites programmed by twenty-somethings that cost very little to build and do some kind of aggregation stuff, build communities and - if you're really lucky - sell for a large sum. In the technosphere, or whatever it's called today, Web 2.0 means a cool use of "Ajax-ian" stuff built in 2 weeks in some cool framework (Ruby Rails?) and perpetually in "beta" (which is itself and old frame that doesn't fit the always-upgradeable web world).

I don't think the current fascination with "mobilising" the Web 2.0 thing is going to be all that productive, but still worth exploring and I'll leave Ajit's new book to inform us about his ideas, which are wider than I'm painting here. Certainly, using some of the technical approaches will yield some interesting service possibilities. Opera Platform is an interesting technology and some cool things can be done with it. If there is a "new way of doing things" ("2.0") transition of the mobile experience, then it is presence and buddy lists that should be grabbing our attention. Don't think of a Web 2.0! Think of IM 2.0. Think of building your online life around an IM-type client that can do IM, voice, PTT, video, blogging, chat, etc. Presence is a powerful paradigm that has not been explored enough (in fact, most operators seek to surpress this element of IM in order to lower bandwidth requirements for what they deem as "signalling" stuff - old frame again).

The fact is that the mobile experience is extremely limited. This point seems to go repeatedly unnoticed by many would-be mobile entrepreneurs (the 99/100 that fail). Right now, you are most likely reading this blog in a web browser, but no doubt you have multiple tabs and apps all over the place. You can switch context easily. A lot of effort has gone into making browsing a really neat experience, which is why we have a "2.0" - people want to build services on the Web, not just publish documents. By contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to the IM interface, as we simply don't think of it as an entry point for many services (although desktop IM clients are clearly headed in this direction). Nor do we really think of the desktop as being something that hinges around a buddylist (or contacts/address book). A mobile is hugely buddy-centric.

As a brainstorming exercise, if you take time out to think of all the interesting things you might do with an IM-type interface, you might be surprised about how many services could be delivered via the buddy paradigm (and buddies don't have to be human - they can be bots). Is a conversational paradigm more useful than a hyperlinked one?

That said, Web does have a role to play and there is a lot to be done here. Firstly, as mobile networks begin to move towards an all IP existence (SIP etc.), the possibility for mash-ups becomes very interesting. The must-have-an-API trend in "2.0" world makes for all kinds of exciting possibilities and this is an area that I encourage operators to consider. Of course, they are challenged to do this, but the huge gravity of certain types of community on the Web - and the ability for these to form and re-form at lightning speed - is not something an operator can hope to mimic, nor can they continue to ignore. However, they could exploit it. They need to go there in the end, for a number of important reasons (we can discuss later).

Web should be intimately linked to mobile but isn't. Today these are two very separate worlds for a typical operator customer. A typical user has a mobile experience, but not in any way connected to an accompanying web experience - I mean on The Web, not on the handset. There's no real continuity between the mobile experience and the operator's portal (and then beyond via affiliation and mash-ups). Again, think of the buddy paradigm. Once I get my buddies on my mobile and on the net, I can think of all kinds of interesting things to do with presence, like connecting real-time with visitors to my blog, my myspaces and so on.

Way back in 1998, when I designed the Zingo wireless portal for Lucent Technologies, a major theme was fluidity of data and experience across the mobile and desktop/Web. This needs revisiting in the "2.0" world now replete with WiFi and other "seamless mobility" technologies. New devices are coming out that can give developers the access to mobile goodies that they need to make this happen. I do believe that a migration towards larger format devices with tiny Qwerty keyboards is going to happen, but the fuel for the tipping point is hard to tell. As I suggested in an earlier blog, it might be as simple as making these devices cool - I think the Motorola Q is headed in the right direction, but when we put our thinking caps on, there's a lot further we can go to make larger devices truly irrestible. Do we need a "2.0" in device design? I think so.

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Doing the Razr flip!

2006-08-14T15:11:00.000-07:00

My 7-year old son showing how easily he can do the "Razr flip" with one hand. Seeing him do this, I realised that design of a phone might take such "displays of skill" into account. In the case of the Razr, there is no indent to allow the thumb easy access for one-handed flip. No doubt someone has a patent on it though!

"Mobile apps" nearly dead?

2006-08-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

Before long, probably 3 years, we shall probably no longer talk of mobile apps. All of us "mobile experts" may have to find something else to do. There will be a shift towards iconic designs for larger format devices with keyboards, which more and more consumers will demand - the Motorola Q is already on that track, but the UI will also have finally attracted the design attention it deserves. We will want to carry these devices and they will become abundant - imagine the quality of the Nintendo DS graphics on a handset! Network speed via HSDPA and WiFi will dissolve many bandwidth-related issues (there are still many of them) that plague mobile services today (both uplink and downlink). Rich web technologies will be widely available, including Ajax, Flash etc. Most devices will support one of a few fully-open (i.e. abundant APIs) operating systems.

There will probably need to be some "mobilisation" of apps to make them work well on mobile devices, such as provision for offline data caching, transcoding of content, but these won't require specialised mobile technologies - these will be done within the realm of web technologies and become natually part of web frameworks and platforms.

Mobile will just be another channel for an Internet service. Of course, this idea has been pursued for many years. Remember the original whitepaper for HDML (WAP precursor)? The whole model was "Internet on the mobile phone". They just fudged over the smallprint bit about "...with two buttons and a only 40 words per page". Thankfully, those days are rapidly moving on by.

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WAP Banner Ads

2006-08-08T16:22:00.000-07:00

Orange has just released WAP banner ads. Is this yet another obviously-going-to-fail attempt to shoehorn the web experience into a tiny device? I'm sure it's an experiment. Let's hope that the ads are highly personalised. Who wants to waste already precious screen space and download time on something likely to be ignored more of the time? And what will the user experience be like when clicking through to the ad? Most ads on the web link to a visual feast of info (i.e. the advertiser's website), not replicable on WAP. They are also actionable - i.e. can often lead to actually buying something, also not replicable on WAP.

I'm sure they've thought it through...banner ads on our site, so must have them on the WAP site too!

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Video Portals (Interesting Mobile Company #1)

2006-07-31T18:35:00.000-07:00

Voxsurf are an interesting company with a neat 3G video portal solution. You can dial a number with a mobile and watch video content, but because it's a video call you can also leave a video message. This allows many interesting services, such as participative TV where viewers can leave opinions or just deposit their own content. The dial-up aspect of the video portal concept makes it powerful. It means users can instantly access the service - as simple as dialling a number. This is far easier than messing around with portals and URLs and other barriers to access.

What's neat about Voxsurf's solution is the service creation tool. It is a visual tool that allows a sequence of video events to be set up and and made navigable via pressing buttons during the call (using "touch tones"). The extensibility of the framework allows powerful events to be programmed. For example, a user could leave a video comment on someone's blog and their comment could cause an alert to the blog owner who subsequently watches the comment via a video mailbox. This is also a way to introduce the user to video messaging.

Interactive video services are of great interest to mobile operators and potentially to MVNOs.

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100 ideas...

2006-07-31T16:25:00.000-07:00

As of my last post, I finally reached 100 ideas on my blog. It will take me a while to edit them nicely into a PDF and add my comments, but as soon as it's done I'll post the finished item on the blog: most of the ideas are still current. Meanwhile, I'm not sure I'll keep blogging beyond 100, although I'm generating ideas all the time (it's what I do). I'm probably going to switch to a new 100 list, most likely 100 Interesting Mobile Products (and/or companies or people). This time, I'll try to complete it faster....

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Rap battling via PTT (idea #100)

2006-07-09T04:48:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time I designed a mobile game for an urban culture company in London. The concept was to allow users to challenge each other to "rap battles", which are where contestants ad-lib a rap song, taking turns to outwit the opponent with stinging lyrics (watch the DVD extras on 8 Mile if you want to see this in action). A rap battle needs a crowd to judge the winner, which at the time seemed a bit tricky to include in the game. Therefore it was combined with an element of measurable skill, which was texting speed. The idea was for each opponent to send a line and then when the rap was finished, both contestants were challenged with the same lines (in random order) and the first to text the line into the phone scored a point. This blended the creative aspect of rap battling but added a new way of judging the winner. Whilst texting speed bears little resemblance to artistic merit of a rapper, the game would still appeal to the target text-fanatical audience.

The first pass of the game was in fact a single-player game that challenged texters to input lyrics from their favourite songs, which fell down from the sky one word at a time, like Tetris blocks.

I now think that the original rap battling concept could be implemented, but using push-to-talk (PTT, or PoC). Opponents would find each other via a rap battle buddy list where presence could be used to indicate willingness and readiness to battle. A contestant throws down the gauntlet by sending a challenge message to their chosen opponent. If accepted, the challenger is given a period of time (e.g. 20 seconds) to rap their first line, which they do via PTT. The opponent hears the line on their handset and has a similar interval in which to respond, or else automatically lose the contest. Contestants continue until they reach a set number of lines each, or until a contestant fails to respond.

Now for the judging. Just like with an actual rap battle, we need an audience, or crowd. Fortunately, this is exactly what we have with the subscribers to the game. After any battle concludes, a number of other rappers in the "crowd" are sent a link to click and hear the battle. They are then asked to vote for the winner. This is the basic gaming principle. Using a score table, battlers could challenge winners and climb up a score ladder just like any other multiplayer game. Location could be added to allow "battles in my area" and so on. Clans could be formed to add a team element to the competition. Various other elements from the urban genre could be included, such as tags and so on.

There's no need to confine the game to rap. The same infrastructure (new word = ecosystem or platform) could be used to run live poetry competitions.

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Faster mobile menus (idea #99)

2006-07-08T02:35:00.000-07:00

I've always been a fan of the innovative mobile keyboard "Fastap" from Digit Wireless. It uses essentially two "layers" of keys and "non keys" to achieve a high density keypad, one key per character, in the same space as a traditional numeric pad. This allows faster text entry. Digit Wireless have claimed that data revenues are increased as a result of using Fastap. This is believable because of a simple design principle that seems to apply to mobiles, which is if it's easy to do then it's more likely to be done (which on a mobile probably leads to revenue). I know, that's no deep insight! This principle probably applies to most things, but then go figure why so many mobiles don't follow the rule.

I have recently become frustrated with the interface of my mobile. The home page has a selection of icons for entering various applications. This is a common home page design. However, there are more icons than screen space, which means I have to scroll down to access the hidden buttons. On my phone, this means doing one of two things. Either I grab the slider widget on the right and slide it down (my phone is stylus driven), or I keep pressing the down key to select the icons one by one until I get to the hidden icon I want. The slider is out of the question if I want to use my thumb in place of the stylus, so I'm left with pressing the down key numerous times. Is there an alternative?

Well, the simplest idea is simply to give me a simple "next" key (or similar name) so that I can move to the next set of menu icons in one hit and then select the icon. This is a two-step process. However, there is another approach similar to the Fastap one in principle, but implemented using a graphical technique made popular by the Mac interface, which is transparent overlays. Imagine two pages of icons displayed on top of each other. Of course, that would be messy. However, now offset one from the other so that icons on the bottom layer overlap with gaps on the top layer (and there will be some overlap so as to allow large icons to be used). This will still look messy, so now blur the lower layer slightly and add a transparent overlay to the top layer to give continuity.

With this approach, I can now see all the icons. Hitting the space between the top icons (i.e. the bottom layer) will bring the underlying icons to the top (in focus) and move the top layer to the bottom (blurred). Accessing any icon is now only two presses. The advantage over the paged technique above is that I can already see the icon that I want to press, whether on the top layer or the bottom one. If I could remember how to use Photoshop, I could mock-up a demo. Anyone who could do this in Flash, please have a go and let me know how well it works.

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Calendar in my radio station (idea #98)

2006-06-22T06:58:00.000-07:00

Previously I suggested using a digital picture frame to display messages from a PC, such as calendar reminders (see idea #87). The general idea is to grab the user's attention via the "bump into effect". An alternative approach is to play announcements through a radio, a bit like traffic alerts that break into the program. For example, when listening to music in the kitchen, the user would here an announcement like "you have email from fred" or "you have a meeting at 3pm" etc. Most likely, the radio would incorporate Bluetooth or WiFi to receive the announcements from the PC.

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A gate in the wall via personal-use open APIs (idea #97)

2006-06-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

Previously I posted that operators are holding back their ability to create new business opportunities by effectively limiting innovation in their industry. This is because, unlike the Internet, a huge ocean of software innovators and entrepreneurs are shut out of the operators' walled gardens. Operators need to find a way of courting innovators without breaking down the wall.

One possibility is to create a set of open APIs into the operator network to allow mash-ups, but with a strict "personal use only" agreement and some kind of resource throttling where necessary. Most of the usual operator APIs could be made available, such as location, 3rd-party calling, texting, MMS, as well as new ones (such as call records - see idea #94). The operator could also offer an open-source SDK for a server framework to allow developers to quickly build Internet-hosted services with these APIs. A developer can play with this to their heart's content, only able to implement non-commercial services against their own phone account with the operator. Access to the APIs should be free along with a degree of free usage as an incentive. Other features, such as static public IP address for the device could also be included.

The benefits are that developers get a play pit, which is what developers like, but without operators having to think about what's the business model to allow x, y or z service on my network, as these new services are limited to developers in a way that doesn't pose a business threat. What the operator gets is a community of developers doing interesting things with their network i.e. innovation. This may or may not lead to actual service ideas with mass-adoption possibilities.

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Voice notes with text navigation (idea #96)

2006-06-22T03:26:00.000-07:00

Many phones incorporate a "voice memo" feature that allows digital voice recordings to be made. However, often this feature is next to useless. To start with, open up the recordings folder and the user is often confronted by a long list of obscure file names, like 24200011.amr, 24200012.amr and so on. It's like the old days of computing all over again, before computer scientists realised that normal people were trying to use their software and before usability - "design" - became vogue (obvious?).

The key missing ingredient is voice recognition. This is not beyond the realms of a mobile phone's processing capabilities, especially with today's powerful low-cost processors. Some phones today even have graphics accelerator chips in them to make 3D games go fast!

What I think is worth exploring on the mobile is a hybrid approach to allow speech files to be navigated using a text-driven interface, but reviewed and edited using voice. For example, I record a series of voice notes and can then look through the notes using the first few words from each note. I imagine being able to spin through the opening words of each note using a thumbwheel and then clicking on the entry to hear the voice note again. If the voice note is large, I can use a similar tool to navigate through the note using "text clips" of the converted voice stream.

Using this approach, the use of voice as a tool for note taking becomes viable. It also means that it is not necessary for entire audio files to be converted, which might be too costly in processing terms, especially if fast and accurate performance is required. Performance and accuracy can be improved by uploading the voice files to the PC for some serious number-crunching offline.

An additional feature to be considered is voice search, using a spoken word to find matches in the voice notes.

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Unified addressing (idea #95)

2006-06-21T16:43:00.000-07:00

Previously I have argued for the ability to "dial a website". At one time I suggested changing the UI on phones to incorporate a "connect" ("@") button, as shown in the image on the left. Of course, some phones do incorporate a dedicated portal button to launch the operator's home page in the browser with just one click - an idea used heavily by Three. However, this is not a short-cut button, but a data entry button that follows an input string, namely a number (or it could be a domain name).

I still think the idea has merit, but in a modified form. It seems obvious now, but what the connect button should do is allow the user to enter a number and for the phone to return a list of services associated with that number, such as "call", "website", "text", "download", "find", "email" etc. A client on the phone performs a look-up of the number to see which services are registered with the number. A number owner is free to register any services they wish (within a defined allowable set). For example, if my number is 0977115554 (which it isn't), I could register wirelesswonders.blogspot.com against that number. I could also register an email address, a postal address etc. These would all be DNS-type look-ups, as already possible using ENUM mapping.

The objective still remains that we ought to be making it dead simple for mobile users to connect to services, which is not easy on today's phones. We don't need to wait for any rocket-science or massive core-network upgrade (i.e. IMS, which needs enum) to justify moving to such a unified addressing scheme now. It can be done today and is probably a highly useful aid to mobile services adoption. The use of a "connect button" is a design issue, although I think it has merit.

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Pretty in pink...

2006-06-20T07:42:00.000-07:00

There are so many pink mobiles. When I posted a while back (pre pink-fad) about the idea of there being a "Women's Mobile", I said that I didn't mean a mobile with flowers on, but that is exactly what Siemen's latest "Poppy" design has. Things have moved on and we now have sites dedicated to "women's gadgets", like Shiny Shiny.

While at Shiny Shiny, I noticed the "Beat Buckle", which enables an iPod to be carried on (used as?) a belt-buckle. This reminded me of my crazy cellular socks idea (# 58), which was supposed to be a joke, but looks like someone took it seriously with the cell phone garter. Moreover, it has now become fashionable to puts socks on the phone, which sounds like it has excellent re-cycling potential to me (after washing).

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Context awareness via phone habits (idea #94)

2006-06-19T02:46:00.000-07:00

Recently I wrote a conference paper for Motorola about using context-awareness to improve the end-user experience. Context awareness is about bringing any additional data, not generated by the application itself, into an application in order to enhance the user experience. For example, if I go to make a call to Fred, the "dialling app" on the phone could detect that I have an urgent email from Fred. Therefore, I may choose to read the email before making the call. The app found out about the email by asking my Gmail account. Context can include all kinds of data from anywhere, as long as it is somehow relevant to the task in hand.

In the age of Web Services and Mash-Ups, it is becoming increasingly possible to augment services in this way. Moreover, I have argued in the paper that many service creators will begin to incorporate two levels of service in their application. The first is the core functionality and the second is generating meta-data about the usage of the application. This meta-data shall be made available via an open API for other services to consume and use as context. In this way, a context pool shall slowly emerge on the Internet. It will become commonplace for services to share data, but this will need to be done in a secure and reliable fashion to guard user privacy and so on. Identity federation will probably be a core enabling technology so that services can talk to each other with the users' permission.

The use of tagging shall be important in the context pool. For example, tagging can transform a "coffee shop" in a mapping application into a "meeting place", which will be useful context for a meeting application (as per the opening chapter of my book). Additional tagging by a variety of users can transform "meeting place" into "good meeting place" and so on. It won't be necessary to know the tagging taxonomies in advance because applications will increasingly have "soft interfaces" by incorporating search into the workflow. In other words, when I use an application to set up a meeting, the meeting place could be selected via search to allow the user to play around with different tags as keywords. Of course, the search will be conducted by giving precedence to the context pool before going out to the net for more results. If the search knows that a user relies on Acme Maps for finding places, then it will look in the user's tagged favourites there first.

This is a big topic, but one of the keys is the unleashing of context data, which comes from a variety of sources, particularly from services that we use every day (and other key sources, like the clickstream in our browser, which is more likely a useful pointer into the context pool).

There are so many potential generators of context. Let's consider in this post (for idea #95) my phone call habits, or my phone records: received, dialled and missed calls. This is a potential gold mine of context data for other applications. Imagine these records are available via a Web Services API on the net and that using identity federation a user can give permission to another service on the net to access this API. A task management application could use these records as useful context data. For example, it could tell whether or not a scheduled call was made to a particular number. An online phone book could also use the data by importing unrecognised numbers and prompting the user to add names. There are plenty of other applications, but it isn't for me or any service provider to dictate them. Once open APIs become available that release service usage and context data into the net, users will have much greater power to create useful and interesting services. Sooner or later, operators will realise (some are already) that this kind of net-friendly and open approach to services is the only future for mobile applications.

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Merged web interface redux...

2006-06-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

If you follow my list of blog ideas, you might remember a posting over a year ago that suggested that the primary UI for the handset should be a search box. This would combine on-device with off-device results and allow the search strings to be interpreted as both potential content searches or commands (e.g. lower volume). Also, I suggested that the results would populate in real-time, just like Google Suggest.

I'm glad to see that a company Zi Corp has implemented a similar idea, which they call Qix and which I picked up on Scott Weiss' usability blog. According to Zi Corp's study of the service running for Virgin Mobile, it improved revenue, which quite rightly it should if implemented well.

Now, this app is an installable app on the handset, which it needs to be to access certain on-device functions. However, in the not too-distant future, it will be a web app, courtesy of the richer UI possibilities on the horizon. Moreover, those off-device results could be driven by a registry of services in the network, allowing a seamless introduction of new services without changing handset firmware etc...so the theory goes (and is actually quite plausible).

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Subsidised mobile web access

2006-06-03T03:49:00.000-07:00

Many in the mobile industry are realising that the idea of "mobile applications" as a category of software is losing its strength. At one point it seemed that a whole new software industry would arise around the mobile space. Of course, there are cases for mobile applications specialists, especially in verticals, but the trend now is towards Internet and existing applications to include a mobile appendage. Overwhelmingly, the Internet, especially in Web 2.0 world, is where the action is and where the case for mobile access will be made. This leaves out the mobile operators, who have been trying to defend their corner as value-added service providers and ward off the "decline" (is it really a decline?) to the role of dumb bit-pipe. However, they have mostly blown their chance to be anything other than a bit pipe by shutting the doors to the vast pool of innovative expertise that congregates around the Internet, or anywhere where they can find a place to sell their wares, but where else is there today other than the Internet?

In my last post I mentioned the idea of differentiated charging for net access, such as cheaper access to a particular site. An obvious one is Google Search, which could potentially be free of charge to access based on the assumption that using it will lead to surfing other sites, which is data revenue for the operator. However, an alternative model is offering free-of-charge access on the basis that Google would share some of the ad-click revenue with the operator. This would extend to access to the ad sponsor's site. In other words, given that mobile access to websites is a premium, then who should pay for the premium? Sometimes it should be the user, but sometimes it should be the site owner (or aggregator).

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User-defined data tariffs (idea #93)

2006-06-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

To promote greater use of mobile access to the web, operators could offer user-friendly charging schemes that allow a user cheaper access to their favourite websites. Using content-based charging techniques, it is possible to detect the traffic being requested from the mobile and to apply a specific charging rate to that traffic type. For example, access to mail.google.com could be detected and charged differently to access to www.bbc.co.uk. It is easy to offer a user-interface to a content charging system to allow self selection of cheap-rate domains. On the other hand, operators could offer a basket of popular domains that can be selected in a kind of pick-and-mix fashion as a bundle of cheap-rate domains. It seems a good idea to offer search domains, like Google, as low-rate - or even free - as they inevitably lead to web traffic consumption.

Sooner or later, operators are going to understand that to drive content consumption and data traffic, they need to make it very easy for the users, giving them as many incentives as possible. Whilst this is obvious, there is precious little evidence that this has been taken onboard by many operators. Many WAP portals are incredibly difficult to use and seem to run counter to the golden rule of minimising clicks to find anything useful, never mind offering a highly personalised "Amazon-like" experience.

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Motorola Q - tipping point for smart devices?

2006-05-25T16:25:00.000-07:00

Motorola has recently released its Q device, which some have dubbed the RAZRBerry. That might be a catchy name and it tends to summarise what the device is seemingly all about, which is email, but its proper name - "Q" - more aptly catches the mood: minimalism, sleek, stylish. Unlike the stuffy Blackberry, which until the 8700g has been a great email device, but incredibly boring otherwise, the Q has style. It is, like the RAZR, a very slim device. It is nice to hold and looks like something you want to own and touch - and I mean touch, or carry, as opposed to many PDAs that you really want to bury away in some carry bag or leather pouch.

I have long argued that bigger-display devices with keyboards are the future, for two reasons. One is that it's simply just too damn difficult to engage with useful mobile services on a tiny device. The second reason is that the upcoming generation of portable games players are used to Nintendo DS, Sony PSP devices and iPods. What's been missing is iconic design. Perhaps the Q is going to be tipping point for mass uptake of smart devices, which could lead to greater demand for mobile services once users get a taste for what's possible on a smart device versus a tiny phone. Certainly the web browsing experience has improved significantly on these devices and is approaching a comfortable experience. For sure, a larger screen and a keyboard make a huge difference, one that users simply can't appreciate until it's in their hands. The missing element is the UI design and the feature set, which with Windows might be a familiar one, but possibly a bit too "enterprise" and lacking consumer appeal. Now, if Apple were to bring out a device (along with widgets from their dashboard UI), then that might be the avalanche point.

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Useful welcome messages (idea #92)

2006-05-25T14:47:00.000-07:00

When roaming to other countries, the welcome text from my operator tells me how to access my voicemail from abroad, which is useful. However, this is a golden opportunity to grab my attention and offer me services. For example, why not push me a link to an online information service about the country I'm visiting - exchange rates, weather, important numbers, sight-seeing, local customs (e.g. tipping rates) etc? Surely someone must already be doing this.

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Message in my hand writing, or yours (idea no. 91)

2006-05-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

There are some applications in the market that convert a text message to an MMS, such as an animated message (or avatar). Using a technology like Fontifier, which can create fonts from your hand-writing, it would be possible to send "hand written" notelets.

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Vodafone don't want my complaint via Google

2006-05-23T12:16:00.000-07:00

My latest Blackberry bill from Vodafone was twice the usual amount. I had that sinking feeling that I would wait on a customer care line for ages, but was relieved to find an email address on the bill. Here's the automatic reply:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently: customer.care@vodafone.co.uk
Technical details of permanent failure:PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 8): 550 5.7.1 Mail from 72.14.214.192 refused - see http://www.dnsbl.sorbs.net/

Well, I did go see that link and it told me that my message was coming from a mail server suspected of sending spam. Just to be sure, I did a reverse DNS on that IP address:

72.14.214.192 resolves to"hu-out-0102.google.com"
Top Level Domain: "google.com"

Does this mean that Google is being tagged as a spammer? Whatever it means, Vodafone won't accept my mail from a Gmail account. Now, who's being evil here?

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A Useful Mobile Web (idea #90)

2006-05-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

There's still an obsession with "mobile web", recently upgraded to "mobile web 2.0". Now, I don't have anything against taking the emerging app-centric web techniques and moving them onto mobile devices, which is a somewhat natural progression. As some observers (e.g. Ajit Jaoker) have pointed out, Web 2.0 might be a good fit for mobile.

However, I come back to a simple argument that I elucidated in my book about the fundamental differences between a mobile web experience and a desktop one. You can read it for yourself, but I can sum it up in terms of intention and tolerance. In the mobile setting the user is frequently motivated by an intent to find something out fast because they want to do something else there and then, like make a phone call, book a flight, catch a train etc. This "saving time" objective is distinct from the "killing time" one. In the "saving time" frame of mind, there's almost zero tolerance to anything remotely like surfing (i.e. faffing) around. In that setting, the whole web paradigm falls apart very quickly, especially if it's actually the standard mega-screen web experience shoe-horned into a mobile nano-screen.

As Jakob Nielsen and other usability gurus have told us over and over, most visits to business websites are motivated by a desire to answer a few simple questions - what do you do, how much does it cost, how do I get it, who do I talk to, where are you based? etc. It is likely that "saving time" visits to the "mobile web" are mostly to business sites, not wacko wirelesswonder blog or similar meanders through the bitstream (although you're most welcome and you can get this on your mobile if you dare, via Winksites).

Therefore, it seems perfectly obvious that any self-respecting site that wants to extend its wares to the billion mobile windows in the world should contain metadata to answer these simple questions and this is all that gets dished up to a mobile device, most likely ranked in order of most actionable data first, like phone number (one click to dial it), then address (one link to map it) and so on. After all, the world of going to sites via search engines is a rather uncluttered affair of visually uninteresting, but apparently useful, text-only descriptions and links - albeit presumably relevant ones. Once at the destination site we are looking for answers to those questions, not fluffy flash movies and the like. How much of this fluff is already discounted by the ranking in the search anyway?

No doubt, for unfamiliar businesses we do need a means to anchor our trust in their wares. Nice fluff might add to this process - a "professional" site is always better than a "bedroom" one. In the absence of such eye-candy, perhaps a mobile operator could add some value here. What about some additional relevancy ranking using "calls to" weightings similar to search engine "links to" weightings? Is a flower shop that receives 100 calls to its number a day more useful than one that only gets 10? Perhaps.

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Tickle List (idea #89)

2006-05-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

Operators are starting to roll-out online back-up services for our address books. In case we change phone, or lose it, we can load the contacts back into the new one in a jiffy. Of course, once an operator has the user's address book, there are a hundred interesting things to do with it, starting with using it to drive any other services that require an address book.

Previously I blogged about differential charging in order to offer cheap calls to infrequently dialled numbers. Once the address book is in the network, it's a "simple matter" to correlate phone records with the lowest dial-out rate and tie these back to a name. Rather than send a message, as previously suggested, like "Call Fred today for 50% off" (or whatever incentive will make a call likely), the 10 least frequently dialled numbers could be highlighted in red (say) with a message "Call a red number today for 50% off".

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IEE Presentation...

2006-04-10T15:02:00.000-07:00

I was recently invited by the IEE in Oxford to give a presentation titled "Services for Next Generation Wireless Applications" based on some themes in my book, which I updated for this presentation to include ideas from the world of IMS. Feel free to download the slides. There aren't any speaker's notes, but the general themes are probably still apparent. I'm thinking to annotate a version with a voice-over if I get time (and a suitable tool to do it), mostly to see if this is a more efficient way of communicating ideas that don't fit well in a single blog post and that don't require me to write a paper.

As ever, the moment I reviewed my slides I realised that they need changing and improving, but this is just a snapshot of the conversation ("mobile services") that is clearly an ongoing and unfolding story. I actually prefer to call it GSM 2.0 (not 3G), because there are analogies with Web 2.0, but I didn't put that in the presentation. Some commentators think that there's a Mobile Web 2.0, which is like Web 2.0 on the mobile, but I think that misses some important nuances in the evolution of mobile networks, which is why I prefer GSM 2.0. I shall elaborate on this in a later post.

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Address book wars (idea #88)

2006-04-10T14:27:00.000-07:00

Recently, I posted about using location-based advertising to find a local plumber or cheap milk in the local Tesco Metro. How might the plumber bit work?

Well, in certain circles there is a lot of interest in the address book on your mobile phone, as it is the centre of user attention and is what drives phone activity. In the previous post, I talked about the local plumbers competing for your attention and using pay-per-call advertising, which means that each time they get a call, they pay a result fee to the advertising company who put their number on your phone.

There are numerous ways this could be implemented. It could be done in the network. In other words, there is no number for the plumber stored on your phone, just a generic address (plumber@mynetwork.com) which when it gets to the network is routed via the advertising database to find the next available plumber. "Next available" could be determined in a number of ways. (If plumber doesn't work for you, then think "pizza" or, even more generic "take-away").

It is likely that the user will want to know who they are calling, so this information will need to be displayed on the phone. However, this could be pre-fetched and a list of the top N advertisers immediately gets displayed on the phone and the user takes his or her pick based on the name and perhaps a few word description. If still unsure, they could click on an entry to get more detail or simply ask for more advertiser links. For busy places, like pizza shops, the network could also determine that the lines are all busy and indicate thus in the listing on the phone, giving the user the option to skip to the next shop.

Currently this doesn't exist, but it would be easy to do on some phones today using a MIDlet application in place of the standard address book. Various thinkers and companies out there are beginning to realise the power of the address book and will be chasing the opportunity to get you to use their one. There are a few logistical (and potential technical/usability) problems with this model, but it seems like "address book wars" are coming to a phone near you sometime soon...

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Calendar in my picture frame (idea #87)

2006-04-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

I've already raved on this blog about the photo widget in the Google desktop sidebar. Every 5 seconds it displays a thumbnail image of one of the digital pictures on my PC. I find that at least every 1/2 hour I will click on one and enjoy it full-screen. My wife asked why can't we have that in our kitchen (the most frequently used room in the house)?

This started me thinking about how good it would be to have one of those WiFi-enabled digital picture frames that will do the same thing as the widget, but at a decent size and on display for all to share. What my wife asked today was an interesting question, which was why can't we put a calendar (i.e. from Outlook) into the frame too? That's actually a good idea. It's easy to convert text into an image of course, which could then be added to the queue of images being sent to the frame. A good way to post reminders and make sure they get seen. More bump-into-effect!

Not that we're busy socialites - we're not - but a family calendar is useful, especially for kids events, appointments and so on. The problem is that it's currently on the kitchen wall, which means I can't see it if I'm out and need to make an appointment and check there isn't a clash. This is why I tried using Airset with my wife, which is a web-based group calendar app that can also be accessed via the phone. Problem is that it doesn't have that bump-into-effect. It might be good at reminders (via text message or email), but there's a difference between glancing at the whole calendar on the kitchen wall (dangling post-it notes included) and seeing things in advance than only knowing about it at some fixed reminder interval prior to the appointment. Perhaps the picture frame idea might work. Reminds me of the Zingo portal I designed for Lucent way back in 1997, which has a virtual post-it board on the fridge! In fact, with the right software on my PC, I could send messages from my phone and have them come up as images in the frame! Sounds like a killer app :)

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Spending money doing nothing...(idea #86)

2006-04-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

Recently I used a 3G mobile to gain data access for my laptop (running XP). To my horror, just sitting there doing nothing - no surfing, no emails, no RSS .... absolutely nothing whatsoever - the data meter is whizzing away clocking up lots of bytes on the uplink and downlink. Clearly, something is happening in the background and costing a lot of money doing it.

I guess that I could have poked around with the service applet to see what's going on, but that's not very user friendly, is it?

It seems perfectly obvious to me that XP should detect that I'm using a mobile link (or even just a slow one perhaps) and do something smart about it, like stop any IP traffic that isn't necessary. It could work a bit like a firewall notifier - "app X is attempting to access the net and use lots of your money to do so, would you like to temporarily block it?"

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Name that tune in 1 note...(and idea #85)

2006-04-03T08:11:00.000-07:00

I was watching a DVD the other night (Without a Trace) and heard a song that I liked on the sound track. Unfortunately, it wasn't credited at the end. Then I remembered Shazam, the music identification service, so I dialled 2580 (which I remembered, as it's the middle keys going downward) and held it out to the TV speaker. Seconds later, it sent me a text note with the artist and track. It was Mazzy Star ("Fade into You"), who's probably very famous, which shows how little I pay attention to popular music.

Combined with a music download service, the service would really rock (forgive the pun). Now if there was an API into iTunes (accessible from Shazam), I could have gone clicked on the link and downloaded the tune. Better still, my desktop could have gone downloaded the track for me and - "Shazam" - there it is, next time I charge my iPod.

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Candid camera

2006-03-29T14:01:00.000-08:00

Took this with a camera-phone (Nokia 6600) using Celebrity Snaps by Starwave Mobile. The idea is to pose, in this case with one of The Muppets, and send to a friend's phone or email.

Bluetooth headset battery life (idea #84)

2006-03-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

I've no idea how much battery life is left in my headset, as it has no display. It would be useful if the battery level were available via the handset.

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Generic phone settings (PLEASE!) (idea #83)

2006-03-22T02:14:00.000-08:00

I got an invite to a public meeting about mobile content. Here's an extract:

"Complex settings, confusing interfaces and disabled functions show that the customer seems to be the last thing on the minds of the mobile operators and handset manufacturers."

Actually, the last bit isn't true. Nearly all the revenue comes from talking and texting, so these interfaces tend to work quite well and are highly optimised in most cases (although there are still some incredibly daft interfaces to the address book on some phones).

If you've ever bought a new phone and then plugged in a SIM card, you will know the pain of having to work out the settings in order for WAP/MMS to work (or any other service - e.g. IM). This all seems unnecessary to me and I'm sure that the OMA are working on a solution. Meanwhile, here's mine...

All operators should support generic settings, which means exactly the same APN names, usernames and passwords. These settings will be pre-programmed in the phone by the manufacturer. At the very least, this will enable the phone to establish contact with a server to download operator-specific settings appropriate to the user's account.

Can it be that easy? I must be missing something.

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2006-03-21T17:42:00.000-08:00

After a long day in Morocco telling the operator how to deploy 3G apps, I tried to blend in with the locals in preparation for bargaining in the hotel gift shop, which didn't work of course - no one appeared to wear those hats. This picture was taken by my colleague on his Moto SLVR and subsequently uploaded to Avvenu and shared from there via email, sucked in via Picasa and then uploaded to my blog.

From Lego to Mobile (idea #82)

2006-03-21T17:33:00.000-08:00

My son built this lego plane using the rather clever 3D lego builder on their site. After building any model, the site allows a kit to be ordered to build it! Could it also be exported from there into a mobile game for a round of mindless laser zapping?

Differential charging (idea #81)

2006-03-20T15:40:00.000-08:00

The last couple of posts talked about exploiting the "bump into effect" (BIF) to encourage phone users to make calls to people not called recently, such as the "tickle list" of contacts. The BIF can be very powerful in its own right - on average I view (by which I mean click to enlarge) a few photos every hour thanks to the Google sidebar popping the thumbnails in my peripheral vision. When I don't display the sidebar, I view a huge zero.

The visual element here is attractive. That's why I think adding pictures to the phonebook on the phone and using these to remind the user to make calls will have a stronger BIF than just the text directory.

However, there are further obvious incentives, like cheaper calls. The network can simply offer to make the call to an infrequent callee cheaper, such as half-price for a limited time or as a one-off tempter - "Call Fred now for only 5p a minute".

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Encouraging MMS (idea #80)

2006-03-19T14:11:00.000-08:00

In my previous post I mentioned how I like the Google sidebar widget that cycles through my pics. This is a "bump-into-effect" app. I mentioned doing this on the phone, but to remind me to call old friends - just pop up their picture on the phone with a note "it's a while since you spoke to Fred" and a button to press "call Fred".

Another idea is to simply implement the Google widget on the phone, assuming that I have photos stored on the phone. Anyhow, each time a picture popped up (probably as a screensaver), it could come with the button "MMS to a friend?"

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Bump-into-effect on my mobile (idea #79)

2006-03-19T13:14:00.000-08:00

The sidebar for Google's desktop tool has a nice panel called "photos" which continually cycles through thumbnail images of the "My Pictures" folder and sub-folders. If you see one you like, it can be opened in a jiffy. As these are my photos and not ghastly banner-ads, I tend not to blot them out of my vision - I will frequently have a quick look and occasionally open one up.

This is the "bump-into-effect", which I first remember hearing on a Tom Peter's tape - I think he talked about leaving books lying around so that you read them and also leaving bikes by the back door so that you ride them. I've mentioned it a few times before.

I wonder how this might be utilised to good effect on the mobile? I remember the old idea (and I can't remember where from) of an app on the phone prompting the owner to "tickle their contacts" - call people not called recently just to say "hello". A photo-enabled phonebook would make it more compelling.

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Blackberry 8700v

2006-03-19T05:26:00.000-08:00

Just got it and love it. Patent woes aside, the BB is a great product. Why? It's simple - it works! It just works out of the box, very intuitively. I always get my email and can always respond.
-- Sent from my Blackberry

To-do with Blackberry and Gmail (idea #78)

2006-03-04T03:39:00.000-08:00

I have often used my Blackberry as a scratchpad for notes to myself, but I want to be able to "sync" to my desktop without actually doing a sync, as all that messy cable stuff is way too cumbersome.

I recently discovered that Gmail will handle extensions to the email address, so that I can send mails to myself with a label ("tag") already built in. For example, user+task@gmail.com will go to the address user@gmail.com. A filter can detect emails to "user+task" and add a label of "task" thereby grouping these emails into a virtual to-do list.

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Roll over and hush...(idea #77)...

2006-03-03T15:34:00.000-08:00

This has probably already been done (in Japan), but it would be great to turn my mobile into silent mode simply by turning it over on the desk. This seems much easier than fiddling around with settings, half of which I can never remember - is it "silent mode" or "meeting mode"?

OK, so I wouldn't be able to see incoming calls on the top display, as it's hidden. No problem, I can use an LED to indicate a call or text (like the end light on the Blackberry). Turning the phone back over wouldn't put it back into into loud mode, at least not for a certain time period.

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SIP in my browser (idea #76)

2006-02-11T06:08:00.000-08:00

In the world of IMS, which is SIP-based, there is a confusion over client implementations. Some companies are emerging to deliver what they call "IMS clients", which is really a strange idea, but it is easy to see why this has happened. These IMS clients are mostly a bunch of apps that will run natively on the phone and deliver some of the early "enabler services" that the IMS world touts, such as Instant Messaging, PoC and presence-enabled phone books. There are a variety of simple use cases around these themes that tend to get bundled in. Adding an SDK to the mix allows the whole solution to become a "client", as other IMS services could potentially be delivered.

Out in the web world, things are moving on in parallel, as the communications model is still firmly HTTP-centric and there is no consideration for SIP, except in some instances that utilise a network-based SIP-HTTP gateway.

However, there is no need why this should be the case. The recent excitement about AJAX in the web world could be made even more exciting by embracing SIP. There's no reason why AJAX messages coudn't run over a SIP stack. This would allow a more elegant interface into SIP-based environments. Of course, AJAX can also run over HTTP and both can take place side by side.

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Browsers versus apps...

2006-02-11T06:05:00.000-08:00

Currently, the architecture of the two approaches is very different. With apps, all the processing logic is on the device. With browsers, especially WAP ones, only display logic is on the device - the business logic is on the server. Whilst it is tempting to think that a fast and reliable link between the client and server does away with difference, that is not the case. Apps are based around programming languages, whilst browser services are built around mark-up languages for historical reasons i.e. browsers are originally built around a document-centric model, not an app-centric model. Actually, "application" in an increasingly generic term that can cover web and embedded use cases, but let's use it in its historical sense.

The efforts of the Web Application 1.0 group recognises the limitations of the docu-centric model and are trying to introduce features into the web world that allow a richer app-centric set of use cases to be realised in the browser model. This work is the driving force behind the Opera Platform.

Now, let's not forget the main concern that the Web world has always been interested in, although we tend to forget it, which is the portability problem, which has been quite rightly pointed out is the thorn in the side of MIDP programmers. A browser is a universal client - one client for many services (i.e. Amazon, Google, etc.). This has never been the case with apps, where there is really one app per service (Excel for spreadsheets, Word for docs, etc.)

To do some really interesting stuff with mobiles, eventually one has to start playing around with the kinds of enabling services and user data that are currently tied very tightly to the device, such as the phone itself (i.e. "telephony API"), the phone book, the text messages and the "messaging API" itself, the call records, the SIM card, the calendar, the Bluetooth stack, the media player, the file system and so on.

Until now, these embedded services have been of interest to the traditional apps community, who concern themselves mostly with APIs. The browser community has not taken much notice of this, except with some vague ideas or proprietary solutions here and there.

The Opera Platform is concerned with these embedded services and has sought to abstract the native APIs from the browser via a set of Javascript APIs via an extended Document Object Model (DOM), which is perhaps now a misnoma and should be renamed POM - Phone Object Model (although people don't know what to call these personal devices anymore - see other threads in this forum).

Now, there is a bit of slight of hand with what Opera are doing, because whilst they are correctly claiming "open standards" approach - by which they mean ECMAscript, XHTML, CSS and Web Application 1.0 generally, an app programmed in this environment will only run on the Opera Platform, which is obviously what they want.

Even if this effort by Opera become successful, whether through their own efforts or by other players (because there must surely be a response, and I don't believe Opera has gone far enough yet to embrace "next gen" mobile use cases) - the progamming model is still not rich enough to support some apps like games, although it could, in principle, be made rich enough via other "open standards" that could address the rendering issues that are at the heart of any game app.

My prediction is that something like Opera platform will become standard across devices and wilfully so, as the operators eventually will seek to enforce a single "standard platform" (of course, there will always be more than one, but not the "hundreds" of variants that plague MIDP implementation). The increasing size of trans-national operators will allow this to become a reality. Operators aren't really there yet because their revenue models aren't centered upon apps, so resources simply aren't focussed on this issue.

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Cheap milk on my mobile...

2006-02-06T15:58:00.000-08:00

Over on the Oxford Uni. next generation mobile apps forum, the question posed by Russell Buckely is what would it take to get users to sign-up for location-based ads. Some commentators think that "cheap milk here" ads from the local Tesco Metro won't ever make it. The future of loc. ads is special promos to the audience of a pop concert etc. Personally, I disagree - and if it's cheap milk versus Madonna wallpaper at her latest concert, I'll take the cheap milk....and here's why...

Firstly, a general point to make about location-enabling is that none of us has really experienced it. The reason LE apps haven't taken off, or aren't likely to, is because they're simply unusable in most networks - the accuracy is poor. I have argued since its inception that only GPS accuracy is going to work along with proximity-based services indoors. Once people become exposed to hyper-accurate services, they will not want to give them up.

By the way, I remember sitting through one of those boring operator developer forums and watching a presentation about how accurate LBS needs to be. Quite unbelievably, they did a survey and asked what kind of accuracy would you like....etc. They concluded with the answer they actually wanted, which is not to go spend money on GPS-accurate systems because no one has asked for them. That's taking paper studies too far! Sometimes you've got to give the service to the user and then ask for feedback. I am convinced that highly accurate services of all kinds will be compelling. Many LE services, including many ad-based ones, only come alive with highly accurate proximity sensing outdoors and indoors. I believe there are many compelling use cases, including "cheap milk".

So, now for the "cheap milk" argument. I believe 100% that this is the future of LE because I believe that the long-tail model fits here. It doesn't matter if there aren't 100,000 Madonna fans who want sell-off milk, just as long as there's enough. What's enough? Enough means that the price of advertising is less than the return. For example, if Tesco Metro can spend 5 pounds per store advertising day-end sell-offs and make more than 5 pounds - they're definitely going to do it because a lot of more-than-5-pounds adds up. Those of us who think "cheap milk" is spam, won't sign up. But to Tesco stores, that doesn't matter, as long as the economics still add up, which in the world of "pay per click" ads, it surely will.

That's perhaps not long-tail enough. What about the local plumber? If he can advertise that he's available in your area today (and God knows that plumbers are hard to find in any sense of the word) and he pays ("bids") 5 pounds for that hit that makes him 100, then he's going to do it too.

The problem with all this - and I've been writing reports for various customers about this for years - is that the cost and complexity of placing localised ads is currently prohibitive. There are all kinds of "messy" IT problems to solve . Take the Tesco example again. They will need to plumb their in-store inventory/EPOS system into the "ad service" and pipe that through the operator's network, including - probably - a revenue share back to the operator and so on. Average cost of such a project might be thousands of times the cheap milk sell-off margin over one year (or whatever ROI period accountants use these days).

Operator networks are by-and-large cumbersome telco networks, not nimble edge-of-network web servers and the like. However, that revolution is coming, albeit slowly. Operators are moving towards a Services Orientated Architecture (SOA) where eventually their whole business will be one big "software application" accessible via the net (web services etc) - as will Tesco and others. It is difficult to appreciate the benefits that SOA promises - and even operators don't really understand the transformative possibilities - but one of them is how previously very complex business rules and the expensive IT required to implement them will be as easy and cheap to implement as clicking a few mouse buttons. So, if the local BMW garage want to beam you an ad for a car that they already "know" you've been looking at on Froogle then they can implement that app/ad for next to nothing.

Many interesting mobile apps in the future can only come to fruition with this sort of complex multiple operation/business logic underneath. I believe that what we are headed for is a different question than the one posed by Russell. People will ask "why wouldn't I want location-based ads?" "Hello?" I suspect that Google already know this.

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IMS - What about the client?

2006-02-04T02:48:00.000-08:00

In the world of "next generation" and "converged" networks, IMS is currently looking to become king. One of the aspects of IMS that gets talked up is the so-called "combinatorial services" idea. The concept here is a mix-and-match services built upon a variety of underlying services, such as a bit of push-to-talk, a bit of presence, a bit of IM, a bit of this and a bit of that. It is good that the ethos of IMS is committed to this idea from the start. In essence, it is the same as the current trend for open-APIs via "web services", such as the way Flickr can be accessed by other services. Google maps is another example.

However, unlike in the web world, in the world of SIP-based IMS, the delivery of these combined services is more problematic. The fulcrum of the web is really the browser because it is a universal client - it can present any data from any site. One client for potentially millions of services on the web. However, there is no universal client for IMS. This makes the client the weak link in the system.

Of course, I'm not talking necessarily about combining services in the client. A lot of the "combining" will be done at the server, in the same way that Google-map derivatives are created. However, some combining can be done on the client and this is offered in some approaches toward IMS client solutions, such as the inclusion of a presence-API on the client to enable any app developed for that client to be presence-enabled. an example could be the much talked about presence-enabled phonebook - see if the person you're calling is available or not etc. Some combined services are inevitable on the phone because the application needs access to native phone applications and data stores, such as the text messaging inbox and address book. Although, one has to ask to what extend more and more of these functions can be migrated to the network.

Application portability is affected if these client-APIs are not standardised. Of course, there is a degree of standardisation through the Java MIDP process, but we all know that for many applications the "write once run anywhere" promise is sorely broken.

One wonders to what extent operators might be ready to push their handset vendors towards a standard "platform" so that development of services can truly flourish, notwithstanding all the other hindrances, such as the "walled garden" business models. Many operators are about to invest in IMS networks. At the moment, their general mentality towards apps still revolves around "killer app" concepts, or very much NOT the long-tail: a few apps making big bucks. I can't imagine an operator really thinking beyond a few tens of services at most. But, when it becomes apparent, as eventually I think it will, that a world of thousands of services might be possible, then standardising the handset platform might become inevitable. The forthcoming "IMS client" problem might make this realisation come sooner, although we still need various technical advances towards the "universal client" idea.

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AJAX scours again...

2006-01-23T09:40:00.000-08:00

A while back, I blogged about using AJAX as a possible solution to various mobile usability problems with browsing. Essentially, all it does is improve the user-interaction experience when using a browser by allowing new data to be uploaded into the "web page" rather than the browser. It is really at its most powerful when this occurs "ahead" of the user asking for the info. For example, I spend a few moments looking at a list of nearest cafes in Bond Street, during which time the web-page (via it's little hidden "AJAX -program") has already uploaded the next set of results. Then, as soon as I hit the "next" link in the browser, bang! Suddenly the next 10 cafes appear with hardly any delay. It almost seems like magic, which, of course, technology is to the uninitiated.

This minimal delay is not only because the "AJAX program" pre-fetched the data (an old trick in computer science that's been used for decades in micro-processors), but also because all it did fetch was the data, not an entire web page. The new data is just "squirted" into the web page already sitting in the browser.

For a while, having an "AJAX solution" in your business plan, or website, was a vogue thing to do. Now, according to Ajit Jaoker, whom I know well, having watched him enter the industry and become an established personality, an entire business model can be built around AJAX. Not only that, but said business model can possibly save the "mobile data industry" from its own fractured beginnings, to which O2 now seem to be faithfully contributing via their weird I-Mode project. Sorry O2, but we haven't forgiven your "surf the mobile web" campaign. We are still waiting...

I'm not saying that I disagree with Ajit's hypothesis. It's not as if an entire "business model" can't be based around a piece of technology. After all, HTTP/HTML is a case in point. There would be no "online" anything without this marvel, never mind a business model. For some time, I have suspected that we are missing a vital link in the "mobile online" world. What we often fail to recognise is that the most critical departure that HTTP/HTML made from established norms in the PC world was the introduction of a universal client, called the browser. Any type of data was suddenly accessible via one program. Previously, we needed a program to view word processing docs, another to view spreadsheets, another to view database x, y and z...and so on.

However, there are a whole host of reasons why mobile phones have usability problems. In my book (link below), I include an extensive comparison between browsing on a desktop and browsing on a mobile. AJAX only addresses a few of the problems, assuming that it can be implemented well on a mobile in the first place. I can well imagine that the link speed (and delay) and device processing power will not be up to the job in many cases. It's no coincidence that many mobiles support only a limited (if any) set of stylesheet features that can make the kinds of interfaces that make AJAX-updated-displays look nice and run well. It takes substantial processing power to compute (x,y) positioned widgets on a screen. It could be done, but probably requires dedicated hardware, like the sort iPod Nano must surely use to display photos as quick as you can "turn" the touch wheel.

Having said all that, it has been my hunch for some time that instead of the a "universal client" to fuel a mobile data tipping point, assuming that's possible with the current UI limitations, that a "universal API" will be more likely. I have my own ideas what that might be, and it is a much broader connectivity framework than just web pages.

OK, so I actually do disagree with a lot of Ajit's claims for AJAX, but one in particular caught my attention - the claim that AJAX solves the "porting problem". Unfortunately, the example given doesn't work for me, which is how many different versions of a single mobile game must be developed to run on the umpteen hundred handsets out there. First off, this isn't an apples-apples comparison, as you can't really make games with AJAX. But, I think that the problem here is that the "convergence" model is all wrong in this case, namely that the mobile phone as we have come to adore it - i.e. a style for everyman and his dog - is not the best place to stick mobile games. It might be an obvious place to stick mobile games, but not the best place, as it isn't a standard platform for games. It's a standard platform for talking and texting. A Sony PSP is a good place to stick games, or a Gameboy, mostly because they are one of only a few platforms to write games for - no fractured market here.

Is there a future for "mobilised" games consoles? I have often been laughed at for suggesting that that there might be, but the joke is the notion of having to carry around a device so much obviously larger than a mobile phone (which, for most of their lives, have been shrinking). Kids already seem to do this no problem, so I'm not that worried. Interestingly, multiplayer gaming is increasing in popularity with the addition of voice, which is easy to implement with a mobilised games machine. I think that multiplayer gaming will become compelling, which it is more likely to do with all the attention that gaming is now receiving in an effort to make it more mainstream entertainment, less spotty geeky hobby stuff.

Personally, I just think we need bigger pockets, but no one seems to be taking me seriously. Or, perhaps we all need handbags, notwithstanding the problem of hearing your mobile in your handbag.

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Women's coats and mobiles... (idea #75)

2006-01-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

My wife seldom answers her mobile, which I'm not really complaining about, as I don't answer mine much either (well, some of them anyway - I have quite a few). The problem is that she frequently doesn't hear it ringing, despite my repeatedly putting the ring volume to its highest setting. Somehow it manages to keep diminishing.

The real problem is that she carries it in her handbag. In a crowded situation, like a shop or any outdoor place, this can muffle the ringtone quite a lot. Typically (I think) handbags seem to be packed with lots of things. I dare not inventory for you, although I wouldn't be allowed in any case. Remarkably, handbag-stuff seems to have particularly effective acoustic baffling properties. A full-on "7/7" ringtone volume can sound like a mouse-squeek "0.5/7", or worse.

Casually, I suggest why not put the phone in the inside coat pocket, like I often do, where it seems to be quite audible much of the time. I was told that there aren't any inside pockets on women's coats. I didn't quite accept this claim, so I checked. She was right. I don't know if other countries have a different approach to women's apparel, but in the UK, women's coats, unlike men's, don't seem to have inside pockets. My idea is not to assume that only men carry "stuff" that needs pockets and for the designers of women's clothes to fix this problem please.

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Death by email...wirelessly ("obvious" idea #74)

2005-12-22T14:43:00.000-08:00

My latest mobile device connects to Exchange using activesync over the air. I could describe in boring detail how tedious the whole affair is, how slow, how apparently inefficient. I could mention the strange default behaviour, such as syncing the sent-items folder, which is probably the last thing needed when on the move. I could also mention that it has failed to sync on several occasions without any meaningful error message whatsoever (why is that not a surprise?).

However, following on from my previous posting about "user instructions", it is not obvious how to change settings - such as turning sent-items syncing off. Is that possible? Perhaps it is, but where are the instructions? I self-provisioned the service and thank God it was self-provisioned, although it asked for the SMTP address of my mobile device, which is not obvious, especially if, as was my case, you don't have one. (NOTE: as a technical person, I happen to know what an SMTP address is, but what about the average self-provisioning Exchange user?)

Having self-provisioned, perhaps the service could have sent me a welcome email with some instructions, or where to find them online. In fact, in case I misplace such a message, were it to exist, there should be a perpetual button on the user interface - "send me instructions". If the service gets updated, it could have a little "New" icon beside it, so I can download any new instructions that might be useful.

These are matters of design - "user experience" design, not "user interface" design. Unfortunately, "user experience" has become a buzz word used by marketers like it's a shopping item. "Sure, we have a user experience - you can put a tick in that box."

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Waste...how not to ("obvious" idea #73)

2005-12-22T14:10:00.000-08:00

Yet again, having opened a new product - in this case a mobile phone with an accompanying operator "welcome" pack - I am faced with the sadness of having to throw lots of paper and booklets into the bin, never mind the actual packaging with all its bits of polythene, ties and plastic bits. Why is this still necessary?

Take the O2 booklet "Do More". It is only 12 pages long yet still wastes one page with "Contents", as if we need to save time jumping to a page in a booklet that can be skim-read or flicked through in a few seconds. The next page is a gratuitous photo of a man carrying golf clubs - this is opposite the page "Voicemail 901 - always in touch". Its contents are how to activate voicemail and check for messages. The other pages are similarly pithy introductions to operator services. Bin fodder! An environmental waste. But why?

A mobile phone should be a one-button experience. Turn it on and it's ready to go. There should be a button called services for self-provisioning of any new services. I still don't understand why many mobiles don't come preset with the operator number, directory services and other useful services, including help! After all, the best interface on a mobile is still audio, so why not use it to listen to instructions and, if required, activate new services?

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Poetic texter...(idea #72)

2005-11-29T17:25:00.000-08:00

I love words. I am not that good with them, but I love them. We all struggle with words. It is part of the human condition. The evolution of words brought about by texting has caused consternation in some quarters. Apparently we face an outrageous decline in our language. It is tempting to agree now that we exchange cards with greetings written in "textspeak". However, it is not easy to define the "decline" of a language, nor our usage of it.

Let the grammarians, linguists and self-appointed language guardians slug it out. We don't generally think of the change from using "cw" to the Franco-inspired "qu" as a decline, so perhaps writing "gr8" instead of "great" is not such a big deal either.

Dumbing down (there's that "decline" metaphor again) of language is not inevitable. Perhaps technology can help (as well as hinder). Why not introduce a "poetic text compiler" into our mobile phones, allowing us to select from various snippets of beautifully composed prose and a whole gamut of wonderful words? The thumb is mightier than the pen.

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New and interesting book...

2005-11-29T17:13:00.000-08:00

Thumb Culture has now finally been published. Here's how the editors introduce the book:

"Mobile communication has an increasing impact on people's lives and society. Ubiquitous media influence the way users relate to their surroundings, and data services like text and pictures lead to a culture shaped by thumbs. Representing several years of research into the social and cultural effects of mobile phone use, this volume assembles the fascinating approaches and new insights of leading scientists and practitioners. The book contains the results of a first international survey on the social consequences of mobile phones. It provides a comprehensive inventory of today's issues and an outlook in mobile media, society and their future study. "

I contributed a chapter about the future of mobile in the "3G Era", but the book is worth it alone for the output from Stefan Bertschi's Delphi report that surveyed mobile experts on their views of the industry. If you like to read widely about the mobile industry, considering the views of social scientists and technologists across the globe, then this is a unique and interesting book. I have found some of it fascinating.

I had previously promised to release my chapter via the Web, but not until this book was published and given a chance to circulate.

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Floating fish...(idea #71)

2005-11-24T06:21:00.000-08:00

I like those screensavers that show exotic fish swimming idly across the screen in emerald blue water above beautiful coral and sand. Well, I like them to a degree. I don't actually have one. What happens to the fish when they swim off the edge of the screen? I'm sure it would make a good question for a philosophy paper: "Do electric fish exist when they swim off screen?" The programmer would say "yes, they're in the screen buffer", oblivious to the contradiction in the question. But then programmers often seem oblivious to contradictions, as evident in their error messages: "Missing reference 0x001 - please try again". As if I can find the missing reference in order to try again!

What occurred to me was that the fish could end up on the screen next door, if only they knew how to get there. Now, wouldn't that make for an interesting diversion at Starbucks when you're next there with a few coffee-companions. Place your mobiles on the coffee table and watch the fish (Starfish?) swim from one screen to the next, courtesy of Bluetooth. I'm sure there's all kind of possibilities here...

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Age of Connectedness

2005-10-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

From Lubna Dajani's column in Mobile Enterprise Mag:

"In this age of connectedness, however, it is expected that we shall move from a mobile telephony evolution to a mobile computing revolution. But beforethat happens there are a number of questions that need answers, especially since mobile computing is something entirely new to the masses. What is it good for and why do we need it? While definitive answers do not yet exist, this has not stopped us from building networks that supposedly will enable the mobile computing revolution. These are the so-called 3G networks.
To make sense of it all I have called on a dear friend and colleague, Mr. Paul Golding. Paul is an internationally renowned mobile consultant who holds many patents and has authored several books, including his current book titled “Next Generation Wireless Applications.” Paul is known for his creativity in an otherwise conservative industry. I have asked Paul to share his view on the mobile revolution in the age of connectedness. This is what he had to say…"
Click here to see what I said...

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Ring tone pollution...

2005-10-19T04:33:00.000-07:00

On my current assignment, I spend much of my time sitting in a cube. The cubes are open plan. I'm not sure where the term “open plan” comes from, but if it's supposed to suggest that in the absence of walls “the plan” is known openly and not concealed in a manager's office, it was obviously coined with a huge tongue in the cheek. If there’s one thing that sitting in a sea of cubes does, it’s to dislocate one’s sense of belonging to anything, never mind a plan.

I thank an associate from Ubiquity for bringing to my attention the use of the word "polluted". In a lament to him about the death of meaning in a sea of new terms being used to describe a particular area of software just now (IMS related), he replied that the space was becoming polluted. I'd never thought of words as being pollutants before, but it's a nice metaphor. A pollutant is really something in the wrong place at the wrong time, so words can easily fall into that category, but not as easily as ring tones!

Apart from the background hum here, ring tones are a major pollutant – and irritant. Thank God that I have been assigned to a new cube away from the guy with the Ibiza-style rave tone, but only to be flanked with a really bad version of the “24 CTU-phone” tone – the tempo’s all wrong! Please! Fix it.

In certain shared spaces, ring tones should be made mutable by some giant hand in the sky that switches them all off. This has been discussed before in the context of sacred buildings where ring tones are a nuisance to devotees. Of course, with proximity sensing, this type of application is possible and long overdue. The question is whether or not an owner of a building has a right to mute phones in its corral. Let’s hope so. My tinnitus is beginning to take on a melodic colour - and it's not Beethoven's fifth.

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Lack of actionable ideas detector...idea #70/100

2005-10-19T04:06:00.000-07:00

On my current assignment, I cannot tell if I am truly awake or still dreaming. Things don’t seem to make much sense, yet no one around me, save a companion outsider, seems troubled by the trend. Am I the only one who thinks that so many documents and communications are incredibly incoherent? In fact, I am beginning to suspect that incoherency must be the latest obfuscation method designed to exclude pretenders, not unlike the way the software industry works; how many words are there now for “program”?

For example, here is the opening sentence from a recent email:

“I've been passed your name by a couple of people involved.”

Involved with what? Here’s a verb in dire need of an object, but left dangling. Although, perhaps this is deliberate. Perhaps I’m the one who’s supposed to be left dangling. Who are these involved people and what is it they are involved with? Should I know? Perhaps I ought to. Oh dear! I’m left out in the cold and this guy is positioning himself as the gateway to those who are “involved”.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath is a huge cold mass of jumbled up words, which no amount of global warming seems to be thawing out. No surprise then that strategic thinking is so hard. If there’s one thing that strategy requires, it’s a coherent grasp of ideas and the ability to link them with appropriate words, essentially into a logical narrative; constructing strategy is much like story telling (which shouldn't be confused with fairy tales).

What I have found is that my ability to think of ideas has been seriously impacted by this sea of incoherence. I spend most of my time in one of two states: struggling to comprehend or just vegetating, which is an inescapable flip-side of the first state. This all takes place with a constant background hum where I currently sit. I’m not sure yet what makes the humming noise, whether it’s the air conditioning, the computers, or simply an artefact of abusing the vocal centre of the brain after repetitive attempts to comprehend the jumble of words in the latest email, document or – God save us – mega-participant conference call with no actions and with a set of minutes that bares little resemblance to what I heard.

An old idea has resurfaced just now somewhere in my vocal centre. Previously I had discussed the emerging possibility of recording everything we say (and hear) for life, the decreasing cost of memory making this immanently possible in a mobile device (with some sort of additional streaming to offload the files). It ought then to be possible to apply the equivalent of a grammar and style checker to conference calls, detecting a lack of coherent speech and an absence of actionable ideas. Will this be an acceptable defence for not knowing what the hell anyone is talking about? Perhaps I need to speak to those “involved”.

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I-Mode "faster than WAP"...

2005-10-17T04:50:00.000-07:00

In the UK we have been hit by a huge billboard marketing campaign for the launch of I-Mode (on O2's network). One of the adverts says "I am faster than WAP".

Is this a repeat of O2's disastrous "Surf the Net" campaign, the one that gave users the impression that WAP was just like using the Web (i.e. broadband)?

I-Mode on O2 will use a GPRS bearer, similar to most WAP phones in the UK. To say that I-Mode is faster is problematic. Ignoring theoretical technical comparisons (see my book for that), the end-user is not going to get a "faster than WAP" experience, assuming that this is a meaningful comparison. After all, the word "WAP" has taken a back seat in customer facing materials these days, precisely because it doesn't mean much to the user.

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Presence of pain...

2005-10-01T02:23:00.000-07:00

On the SIMPLE WG email list I had asked a question about how to block (politely) IM buddies during roaming, in order to avoid undue costs. Quite rightly, a commentator pointed out that perhaps the status should indicate "expensive calls", not "roaming" and might also apply when the bundled minutes run out (I guess in receive-party-pays scenarios).

Then, another commentator posted this:

“Remember Dr. McCoy's sick bay on Star Trek?

When he had somebody on the operating table, he had this nifty little bar graph he could point to and say "But Jim, he's experiencing 437% of the human capacity for pain right now!" That's what we need. I think we can solve a lot of this by having a pain threshold indicator in RPID.

"Don't bother me, kid. I hurt all over, and it might be caused by those damnable roaming charges. Or the bottle of Jose Cuervo I drank last night. Whatever. But I'm at a 50% pain threshold and if you call, it'd better be important".

The next thing to do is build a service that automatically notifies other carriers that you're ripe for poaching when your pain threshold hits 98% . . . and legislation that justifies you killing them in self defense."

Now, I could claim that as one of the 100 Ideas series, but I'll get back to those in due course...

...talking of which, someone posted a comment (and I thought I'd turned those damn things off) that my "cellphone in socks" idea (which I hope he understood was a joke) could be enhanced using trouser stay-ups (which I think we call "braces"), only I couldn't quite see how to fit them to socks, not that such technicalities matter here.

p.s. I'm waiting for feedback from Wiley about the reception for my "Introduction to IMS" paper at a recent "Convergence" conference. Then, after any edits, I can email it out to the list. If, by any chance, you're waiting for it, please be patient. On the other hand, if you don't "believe" in IMS (and I'm positively agnostic, but given the fait accompli of it all I think it might be a moot point), then you can take the delay as a good omen, congruent with the whole IMS rollout (or lack of)...

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Quality of Service (QoS)

2005-09-22T14:15:00.000-07:00

When defending the case for IMS, QoS is often mentioned. When defending the case against IMS, namely that the Internet already exists (so why bother with IMS?) QoS is brushed aside as a marginal benefit. One dismissal of QoS is based on the "good enough" argument, which claims that fat pipes abound means that QoS is almost a non issue, or an unnecessary expense and complication over and above just fattening the pipes.

If we all lived in the USA, or other select locations, perhaps fat pipes everywhere means that QoS really is marginal. But, we don't all live in network utopia - not yet, anyway. When I Google-Talk to my brother in the UK (from the UK), the service is fantastic. When I Google-Talked today to someone in Asia, the service was patchy. According to a colleague well versed in inter-operator connectivity in Europe (which includes all those newly adopted Eastern nations), the "good enough" connection argument doesn't hold, never mind parts of Asia and most of Africa. It seems that until the planet is illuminated by giga fibre everywhere, QoS matters. Admittedly, that isn't a convincing argument for IMS, but it is a benefit.

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Ebay and VoIP (Skype)...

2005-09-14T06:12:00.000-07:00

Today's Independent newspaper (UK) has an article on the Ebay purchase of Skype. The journalist refers to these two businesses as clubs. People download Skype in order to talk to each other for free, especially over long distances (internationally). This doesn't constitute a club, unless, as is common these days, the word has been given a new meaning, like "community" (yesterday's buzzword for loosely associated people doing the same thing). I drink green tea. Does that put me in the "green tea club" or "green tea community"?

The problem with these descriptions is the tendency to add meaning where there isn't any and so send us all off on another meaningless pursuit of abstract business ideas like "club value". I can imagine it now; the VC retort "yes, but what's the club value?"

The skype user base is, as far as online businesses go, a large one. Clearly, Ebay has acquired a potentially large and lucrative extension to its core auctioning business. Now, if I were Ebay, I would be thinking about how can I improve my core business, as well as extend it. Adding voice connectivity - and presence - to the Ebay auctioning process seems like a good idea. Clearly, Ebay users need to communicate with each other often, for a variety of reasons. Adding a real-time element, for free, has a lot of potential for enhancing the process. One could even conceive of new auctioning processes involving live presence in an auction room and bidding by voice. Ebay probably already has a good idea that introducing real-time user interaction via voice has a positive impact on auctioning. Buying the technology enables them to integrate it into their core business, as opposed to being an incidental component. In the long term, I also think that this will enable them to move successfully into the mobile arena, which will also have a positive impact on revenue by allowing bidders to actively participate in the closing of an auction.

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IM and IMS and Ubiquity...

2005-09-08T16:42:00.000-07:00

I'm currently analysing the major IM standards (XMPP, IMPS, SIMPLE) in order to understand levels of interoperability (gateways permitting). It's hard to keep switching from OMA specs to IETF specs. They're very different in form and format. My head is sore...

On top of which, today I participated in a seminar to understand the generic IMS Application Server platform offered by Ubiquity. Their product is very interesting and exciting. It allows for rapid creation and deployment of IMS AS applications using Java. The whole approach is very similar to Web programming except that one has to grasp SIP call flows and IMS service models, which are more complex than HTTP message flows.

Ubiquity's product comes with a number of service modules (I forget the correct terminology), including Instant Messaging and Presence (although it is not a Presence Server out of the box). It seems a straightforward process to build an IMS service that integrates into a presence and IM environment within a wider set of IMS presence-enabled services.

The emergence of SIP as a major applications "tool" in the IMS world is worthy of detailed explanation from a software/services perspective, as opposed to the common telecoms-biased treatment. Certainly, I should add a chapter (at least) on this to any revision of my "Next Generation Wireless Applications" book.

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Google Talk, XMPP and Mobile IM...

2005-08-26T06:48:00.000-07:00

Google Talk is an interesting development. The instant messaging component is based on XMPP (aka “Jabber”). In a way, this seems a “natural” choice for Google, given their strong interest in XML-based technologies for all kinds of services. XMPP uses XML-streaming. You can think of this as an open (editable) XML document to which the client and server append chunks of XML (“Stanzas”) for the purposes of exchanging messages and presence information.

In the mobile world, XMPP competes with other IM standards, notably SIMPLE and IMPS, of which only IMPS (formerly Wireless Village) was written from scratch for the mobile environment. However, it seems that IMPS will fade away and be replaced by SIMPLE, at least as far as the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) is concerned. The rationale for this evolution is that, being SIP based, SIMPLE fits in nicely with the overall services architecture for next generation mobile (and fixed) networks, which will be based on 3GPP’s IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS).

However, does that mean that XMPP has no place in the mobile environment? Far from it. Firstly, XMPP and SIMPLE are interoperable, at least for basic IM functionality, so XMPP can still be used within an IMS environment. XMPP has a strong following already, including France Telecom (which includes Orange and Wanadoo). XMPP also has a strong presence in the Enterprise IM market. Now that Google has adopted XMPP, along with a stated intention to federate with other XMPP services, there is clearly a renewed gravitational pull towards XMPP.

However, I think that there are other ways that XMPP could prove useful specifically in the mobile arena. I will post on this later.

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Sun on IMS...

2005-08-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

I thought that this article "IMS Q&A with Greg Papadapolous, CTO and Executive VP for Sun" had some interesting slants on IMS, at least showing how Sun sees it anyway.

A couple of interesting points:

One about the billing, that IMS allows a greater degree of understanding how the wireless link is being used, which means more options for billing.

The other is about JXTA, the Java peer-to-peer technology promoted by Sun. SIP is inherently P2P with all the intelligence at the edge of the network. Theoretically, there's an obvious and possibly attractive link to something like JXTA, but the devil will be in the details (like with a lot of IMS stuff).

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A break from having ideas and comments...

2005-08-25T03:16:00.000-07:00

Apologies to those waiting for the 100 ideas e-book. I know it's slow coming and the blog has slowed right down (which happens to my blogging about once or twice a year). I've been busy with projects and found that I simply didn't have time to blog this past month. Moreover, I just haven't been in the "ideas mood". I've taken a kind of holiday from thinking of ideas, mostly because of the summer holidays. Instead, I've been doing a lot of reading (besides working, of course).

I just found out that one of my colleagues has been a contractor for 30 years. We don't know anyone else who's been contracting for that long. With a record like that, I suggested he ought to write a book. Of course, it would need a suitable title. We came up with "How to Survive the Outsource Jungle". A survival guide has a suitable scare-mongering feel, which, judging by UK media, is a good way to sell words. (At the right moment, I will launch my other e-book - "How to Survive Avian Flu when (not IF) it comes.")

Writing is the topic of the week. I've just completed an invited paper about IMS, to be distributed via Wiley at a forthcoming conference. I am also in discussion with a publisher about my next book. I have written most of the book that inspired the name for this blog - "Wireless Wonders" and I'm looking forward to finishing it and getting it published. My current book is selling very well according to Wiley and I'm in discussion with them to write a book about IMS. "Oh no! Not another book about IMS" I hear you say. Well, yes. But, this one will be more "big picture" stuff, presenting the grand idea of IMS rather than all the nuts and bolts of the protocols (although it will have some of that too).

Which brings me to my last point for now. I intend to distribute the invited paper to all those who have patiently subscribed to my email list for the 100-Ideas book, just to keep you going (some late Summer reading) and by way of compensation for taking so long with the ideas stuff. It should be ready for distribution in the next couple of weeks. Happy reading!

I expect to pick up on the ideas blogging in the next few weeks too, so keep checking your feeds for any updates...

Bye for now...

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Universal mobile client

2005-08-02T04:54:00.000-07:00

In my last posting I was commenting on the role of IMS in the 3G era. By itself, it may not amount to much, but combined with the higher layers of interesting services, especially presence, it becomes a potential powerhouse for the nascent mobile computing market.

As such, presence and its associated buddy-list presentation is possibly the vital link to a mobile computing future, along with an ever-increasing reliance on the Internet for our daily living, which is inevitable. Information is the key currency of the modern era. The Web is evolving to provide information in ways previously unavailable and unimaginable. Broadband penetration increases and with it comes a more habitual reliance on the Internet.

The question is whether buddy-list managers ("buddy browsers?") and Web browsers are convergent. This would certainly be a good idea as it would mean that we still have a single universal client with which to visit the information world and to interact with presentities (i.e. anything - human or automaton - that can convey its state to us and support interactive real-time communication). Imagine doing a search on contacts in your social-networking tool (take your pick) and having their presence information visible in the results and actionable (e.g. click to call, IM, push-to-talk etc.)

Currently this is not how things seem to be evolving, other than in indirect ways. There is no such thing as a buddy browser of course, but we have Instant Messaging (IM) clients. The problem is that service providers might hog the buddy browser client to themselves and lock users into a single provider-centric experience. As we know, were this how The Web evolved, we wouldn't really have a Web would we?

Provider lock-in or not, what we need in the first place is a means to handle presentity information and communications from within the browser, giving rise to a whole new range of potential applications and user experiences whilst maintaining a universal client (browser).

In fact, the problem has already been solved to a large extent. The recent hype over AJAX has brought new possibilities to our attention. Ignoring its name and finer details, the technique allows elements within a web page to communicate with remote servers without the need to reload the entire web page. Most of the time, these embedded communications sessions take place in response to user requests. A user clicks on something and the browser passes this event to the embedded script that uses an AJAX program to communicate with the remote server. State changes happen asynchronously to user interaction, so we would need to be able to cope with updating the page elements in response to remote events. Perhaps the AJAX suite of technologies already allows that, but I don't know.

There's no reason why this can't be done to talk to remote presence servers. Additionally, embedded scripts could be used to launch helper applications, like a SIP client to allow an interactive session to be established, such as voice or a video call. It is conceivable that passing snippets of XML in and out of the browser, which is notionally what AJAX does (it doesn't need to be XML, despite the "X") is the universal browser-helper model too. A SIP client on the mobile could allow such interaction with an AJAX program.

Of course, this approach is already present in the PC world (e.g. Microsoft's Communicator, which is soon to be web-based) but we need to ensure that integrated browsing models are possible for mobile browsers (which Microsoft are also doing). The problem with mobile devices is the myriad underlying operating systems. For something like AJAX to work across all mobiles, the mechanism itself needs to be standardised so that browser providers can build it in. If they aren't already, the relevant mobile standards need to embrace these new and exciting possibilities.

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Mobilisation and IMS...

2005-07-19T04:57:00.000-07:00

There is still a lot of uncertainty about the future of mobile communications. This is easy to explain. Mobile telephony is nothing new. We already had telephones before mobiles and the transition is a very obvious step and mostly a matter of economics (i.e. making it cheap enough to do). However, everything else we are likely to do with mobiles in the future will be new. We tend to think of a progression or evolution from voice-based devices to "data" devices. However, there isn't necessarily a continuum. The future is about mobile computing, which is quite a different paradigm from mobile phoning.

Recently, I wrote a chapter "The Future of Mobile in the 3G Era" for the forthcoming title "Thumb Culture". I have been busy expressing the key themes in a presentation, mostly to provide a vehicle for explaining why, if at all, operators need to switch to using SIP-based signalling in their networks. In other words, "why do operators need IMS?"

Numerous whitepapers and sales presentations about IMS seem to concentrate on the topic of convergence, or seamless mobility. This usually means that you can use any wireless technology to make phone calls from the same phone. Outside, you would use 3G or GSM. Inside, you might use Bluetooth or WiFi.

What's the difference? It's cost. If you can make calls at home using a WiFi access point hanging off your broadband pipe, then the calls should be lower cost as you are paying for the broadband pipe already. Of course, this kind of idea works best if you have one phone number (your mobile number essentially), which works the same whether via GSM or WiFi. This is the promise of converged fixed/wireless services.

Where does IMS come into this? Well, to make a phone call, the phone has to exchange all kinds of signals with the core network that eventually connects one caller with another. A GSM phone only does "GSM signalling". The way signalling works includes how the signals are carried by the underlying radio interface, which is very well defined for GSM, as it is for CDMA and other standards. If we just call that interface "cellular" for a moment, then our mobile phones pass their signals using "GSM-over-cellular", which is all laid out in the GSM specifications. However, there's no such thing as "GSM-over-Bluetooth", or "GSM-over-WiFi" etc.

One company (Kineto) has come up with a "GSM-over-WiFi" system. They have done this using a clever trick. By pretending that your WiFi access point is a mini GSM base-station, your home becomes a cell in the cellular network. Hence, by adding a WiFi radio to the GSM phone and then using the "WiFi-as-cell" trick, they end up with a "GSM-over-WiFi" system, which looks like a "GSM-over-cellular" system.

This system, called UMA, means that your GSM phone will work on your WiFi access point. Instead of paying mobile call rates in the home, you will, in essence, get your calls from home "for free", as you're already paying for the WiFi-broadband bit. BT are about to offer such a service, called Bluephone (they orignally thought Bluetooth would be better than WiFi).

IMS offers an alternative. With IMS, there's a whole new way of doing all the signalling, and it's called Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). The beauty of SIP is that it is one of those wonderful protocols based on Internet Protocol (IP) that doesn't take much effort to understand nor to implement. In fact, there are plenty of free pieces of software out there that can implement SIP. It's the kind of thing a software undergrad could write quite easily. GSM, on the other hand, is not a barrel of laughs when it comes to implementation. Moreover, SIP, like so many IP-based protocols, is highly extensible, unlike so many non-IP protocols in the telecoms world.

SIP then, will run on any device that can connect with an IP network. These days, this includes a lot of devices. Even elevators can - and do - connect with IP networks. Certainly any wireless device, like a PDA or mobile, will have the required piece of software to "talk IP", often called an IP Stack. Naturally, our desktop and laptop PCs also talk IP and can definitely implement SIP.

Therefore, if the core of the mobile network is converted to SIP, instead of GSM (CDMA etc), then overnight the network can handle calls between any SIP-compatible devices, no matter how they implement the IP connection: over Cable, ADSL, WiFi, GPRS, Bluetooth, 3G etc. You can think of SIP like a Hotmail account. You can log-on from anywhere and then get your email. With SIP, you can log-on ("register") from anywhere and get your phone calls, voicemail etc.

From this explanation, it is easy to see why the focal point of SIP-based networks for cellular is often seamless mobility. However, the real power of SIP and IMS lies beyond seamless mobility.

In my opinion, 3G is IMS. What SIP enables is a generic "connecting" protocol. We don't necessarily have to be interested in connecting users to make a voice call. In other words, SIP isn't just a "calling" protocol.

Thus far, mobile networks have been almost exclusively concerned with voice calls. The data model that has emerged so far is WAP, which is essentially "Web-lite". The paradigm is connecting users with information in the form of Web pages (portals etc.)

However, the essential nature of mobile technology is connecting people. This Person-to-Person (P2P) nature will be a dominant feature of mobile computing. We need to grasp what P2P "connecting" is all about. Today, we talk to each other. But, tomorrow, we shall:

Click to play, to share, to view, to update, to invite, to compare, to tag, to consult, to message, to conference

…Click to connect!

GSM only allows "dial to talk", which is why we need SIP. With SIP, we can do all the above things. However, this is a little too abstract possibly. What do we mean by "click to connect"?

Well, with the Web, we might think of HTTP as the fundamental enabling technology. In fact, this isn't really the case. The essence of The Web is the "universal client" paradigm, or the browser. With a browser, we can access all kinds of data from all kinds of sources (courtesy of HTTP of course, and HTML).

What is the equivalent of the browser in the SIP world? Well, there isn't one really, which is why I have pointed out before the problems of the SIP-HTTP analogy. I restate the problem here:

The Web = HTTP + Browser + HTML

SIP = SIP!

Substituting IMS doesn't work either:

IMS = SIP + Some interfaces (e.g. Billing)

What's missing? Well, the crucial component is the user interface.

Language escapes us at this point, because there is no word to describe the forthcoming SIP-based user experience. However, the missing ingredient is something called Presence. If I stick with the view that I started with, then I believe that the future of the 3G era is:

3G = SIP + Presence

or,

3G = IMS + Presence

which is why I said that 3G is IMS, even though a lot of the current obsession about the future is with speed, or something called HSPDA. This means very fast download speeds, but that's not really a paradigm shift: it's not a new engine, just better fuel.

The way to think of this new paradigm is to think of Instant Messaging, specifically the buddy list component. In the buddy list we can see our buddies and their presence condition: online, offline, busy, away, out-to-lunch, etc.

In future, this is how all of our connecting will be driven - via a buddy interface, except that we shall have more than the option to "click to IM". IM will be only one component. We will have all the other options mentioned above, including "click to talk", which will connect as for a voice-call and replace the "dial to talk" mode that we use today.

We could also "push to talk" (like a walkie-talkie), "push to view", "click to play", "click to share" (i.e. contacts, notes etc.) and all manner of other methods of connecting. In fact, the "connecting" paradigm will extend beyond P2P exchange. Machines will begin to appear in our "buddy" icons, such as our home security system. We can imagine a buddy called "Alarm" and we can see its state: "armed", "unarmed", "red alert", "yellow alert" and so on. Another example is a taxi buddy, a flight buddy and so on.

In some cases, the presence state is the information that we require and is a subtle form of communication in itself and one that we shall become increasingly reliant upon as the process of mobilisation marches on. In other cases, the presence information is an aid to connecting thereafter and the two are closely related. Together they still constitute "connecting".

With the personification (reification) of objects (e.g. machines), we might reasonably expect that dialogue-based communications might become a familiar mode of interaction with machines instead of the current transaction-based (e.g. Web-control) modes. For example, we could imagine having a dialogue with our alarm system via IM. It would "speak" to us as if it were human: "The system is currently unarmed, would you like me to arm it?", or "The alarm has been reset, would you like to call your neighbour?" and so on. In many cases, this is a far more efficient mode of communication than messing around with web-based options and all that non-linear navigation that goes with it. However, it is also possible to move from one mode to another.

With all these modes of connection, SIP allows all the underlying connections and signalling to take place, including transfer of presence-state information. Presence, by which I really mean "buddy-centric" communication (people or object), is an essential component of mobile computing, as it really provides the "Universal client" (and metaphor) through which we shall interact with the digital world.

Mobilisation is the name of the process of folding more and more of our daily tasks into the mobile computing realm. This is a two-way process. Technology improves and produces enablers. Circumstances change, economically, socially, psychologically, that lead us to discover how the enablers might be useful to manage aspects of our changing world.

The buddy-driven presence paradigm will play a significant role in the mobilisation process, if only because it provides us with a model of the world ("world view") that we can work with through our mobile computers. Connecting with "buddies" seems a very natural paradigm.

IMS allows operators to build an infrastructure that will support this paradigm. Therefore IMS will become important in the future of the 3G era. 3G is IMS.

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Usability...a phone that sucks...

2005-07-11T02:43:00.000-07:00

A colleague alerted me to this phone sale on Ebay, which has the most honest and funny attempts to describe the "end-user experience". Among other things said:

"It's the suckiest phone I have ever had. It sucks so much it should have been a vacuum cleaner."

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ICE - In Case of Emergency

2005-07-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

Picked this up from Steve Flaherty (Keitai Culture)

Following the disaster in London . . .

East Anglian Ambulance Service have launched a national "In case of Emergency ( ICE )" campaign with the support of Falklands war hero Simon Weston.

The idea is that you store the word " I C E " in your mobile phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted "In Case of Emergency". In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them.

For more than one contact name ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc.

Spread the word...

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London terror and mobiles...

2005-07-08T02:39:00.000-07:00

One minute we are celebrating the Olympic-bid triumph, the next we are in shock. The attacks on London are cowardly and barbaric and my thoughts and prayers are with all those affected. I hope that the criminals responsible are brought to justice.

The use of mobiles during yesterday showed us how integrated and essential they have become in our lives. Many of the photos of the events unfolded came from mobile-phone cameras. The BBC were asking for photos and video clips, providing numbers for receiving MMS messages. I first heard about the attack via BBC alert on my Blackberry.

There were reports of the mobile phone system being jammed. This is a perhaps the wrong word to use, as usually it means a deliberate denial of service, which is what I thought the initial report was indicating. However, it seems that the system was "overloaded". Technically, the GSM network should not fail under the load, it should just operate to capacity, but perhaps there were failures. It is not clear.

I tried to contact my brother-in-law, who is a regular London Underground commuter. He heard the news early enough to avoid the commute. I couldn't reach him on a call, but he was able to receive a text message OK.

Perhaps it is time that the mobile phone systems were enhanced to include crisis-management features. There are a number of possibilities.

It should be possible to include a "roll call" feature into the system so that users can be "hailed" and be able to confirm that they are OK. Radio and network resources could be reserved especially to allow this mode of communication only, or to give it priority.

During the crisis, anyone trying to call into cells in the affected area could be played an announcement to indicate that the system is overloaded. The network could take over by issuing roll-call messages on behalf of callers.

Calls could be time-limited, so that the throughput of calls is increased. It should also be possible to queue users to avoid the added problem of repeated call attempts. This again would allow a higher throughput and more efficient management of the network resources.

If the called party is not in the affected area, it should be possible for the network to play an announcement indicating to the caller that the person they are calling did not appear to be in the affected area when the crisis emerged.

In short, during a crisis, the mobile network would bring "crisis management" protocols into play and manage how the network is used in order to maximize its effectiveness.

Returning to my Olympics post of two days ago, which started to examine how mobile technology could be deployed in the 2012 London Games, clearly the issue of safety and crisis management should be given top priority and I hope that the operators and management committees are able to address this issue.

These are just a few of the ideas that came to mind, although I hope that such measures are not needed in the future and that this country does not experience any more attacks.

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London Olympics 2012...

2005-07-06T05:32:00.000-07:00

London have won the bid to host the Olympics in 2012, beating ~~Madrid~~ Paris to the post. Well done the London bid team!

That's 7 years from now, which is nearly five generations of silicon (in "Moore-Years"). That's also about 4-5 handset replacements from now, on average for users in the UK. That's well into the 3G era (10 years) and a few years into the 3.5/4G era (HSPDA and WiMax).

Potentially, all kinds of smart things can be done on mobiles for attendees, athletes and officials in the 2012 Olympics.

One thing is for sure is that it will be possible to watch the games from devices, including instant replays. Furthermore, these could be made interactive and on-demand. No doubt, push-to-talk will be heavily used by officials and athletes alike, which will be a prevalent service by then....

Some users might even have wearable displays by then and be able to watch the action both with their eyes and through umpteen selectable cameras....

I think I'll dedicate a series of my 100 ideas postings to The Olympics...

...I've also asked various colleagues in the industry and hope to post a summary later...

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Women and phones (again)...

2005-07-05T04:01:00.000-07:00

I've tried before, in various circles, prompted by Tom Peter's obsession with the topic, to ask the question "is there a women's phone?" I don't mean one with flowers on, though apparently that might work, so think Siemens with their SL75:

"Soft contours and a cheerful floral motif lend femininity to this clamshell-style mobile phone."

(Then again, Siemens lose 1 million a day in their handset business.)

A similar question is being asked in computer games circles, where the dominant market has been young men who like shooting, racing and stealing things. In a recent games convention, the keynote speaker said that to be as big as Hollywood, the games industry had to ape Hollywood and cater for a wider audience, including women.

But, he (not a she) didn't say what designing games for women might mean. There's not much about the subject either in Tom Peter's latest book about design.

What I did find recently, by accident, was this interesting piece by games designer Chris Crawford, who, by all accounts, is a bit of a gamer legend. One suggestion is that women prefer interactions that are fundamentally social, as opposed to men's preferences for physical, like banging, firing, steering things etc.

The social interaction idea really got me thinking, and then I also read Artists and Technologists, which is also a fascinating read, and I think relates to the topic in hand. Here, Chris examines some of the fundamentals of interactivity with computer-generated worlds. He notes that most games require the user to build a spatial model of what's going on, and comments:

"Folks, we've got to drop this maniacal obsession with spatial reasoning. The human mind is capable of many kinds of reasoning: spatial, social, linguistic, syllogistic, analogistic, aesthetic, and numeric. There is no reason for our games be so narrowly focussed.."

So, can we posit an alternative mode of interaction with the mobile phone that is different to our current mental models (whatever they are) and one that is inherently feminine? Moreover, is that a good thing to do anyway, and would also appeal to a wider audience?

In a chapter "The future of Mobiles in the 3G Era" that I recently wrote for a forthcoming book ("Thumb Culture"), I divided mobile interaction into four themes (verbs), "The four Cs of Connectedness", which are communicating, consuming, communing and controlling. I didn't think to explore the gender-potential of each theme, which may or may not be a valid thing to do, but perhaps I should revisit my thoughts here.

The dominant interaction model of a mobile phone relates to communication, mostly talking. In my chapter, I suggest that the essential person-to-person (P2P) nature of mobiles will remain a dominant overarching theme, but we need to think in more broad terms of a super-category of personal Exchange. We ought to be thinking of models of interaction that are are about exchange - of ideas, contacts, thoughts, tastes, news, money, lists, preferences, opinions, interests, intelligence, intentions, and knowledge and so on, whatever digital form these take.

Communing is essentially an outcome that emerges out of these modes of exchange, although there are certain design directions that we can take to make communing more likely to happen.

The point is this. Just like Chris is arguing for a rethink in the games world, we need to think of alternative modes of interaction that draw on other faculties of the human psyche, besides the need to talk. Chris implies that the interaction verbs are a place to start. If we give users a joystick, they are limited from the outset to very narrow set of expressions - "up", "down", "left", "right" and "fire".

Is he onto something here? From the outset, we have modelled mobiles on the age old interaction of "receiver up" (green button), "receiver down" (red button) and "dial" (digits). Now we have joypads on phones too. We can use them to go "up", "down", "left", "right" and "fire".

Operators seem to have an even narrower set of expressions: "call" or "data". What's that? It isn't even a verb. Can we do "data"?

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Built to order...idea #69...

2005-07-05T03:41:00.000-07:00

Previously, I asked the question "is it possible to set up an instant company to make a new cool mobile phone?" I think the answer is yes, but didn't elaborate.

Today in a discussion with a friend who's MBA case-study is related to the challenges of a build-to-order plant for the new Mini-Cooper, a new question was aired:

"Is it possible to make a built-to-order mobile phone?"...
or, instant company redux...
"Is it possible to set up an instant company to make a built-to-order phone?"...

Why not?

And I don't mean changeable face plates.

With modular design, a whole range of parts ought to be interchangeable, including:

1. Keypad
2. Background colour LCD (top and inside)
3. Camera resolution/position
4. Peripheral connectors (mini-USB)
5. Bluetooth/WiFi options
6. Clamshell cover type/hinging direction
7. Colour trim and mouldings
8. Default config of external buttons
9. Memory size/type
10. Operating system
11. Installed apps
12. GPS

All this would be configurable via a web-based ordering system, like Dell's.

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The 4th and mobile freedom...

2005-07-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

It's the 4th July and Americans celebrate their independence from the Brits. The Americans gave us the mobile phone, courtesy of Marty Cooper et al. The mobile is arguably an icon and tool of independence, or freedom - at least from wires in any case. You decide what else. It probably wouldn't have succeeded if The British still ruled (read later). So, we should thank the Americans for our mobile freedom.

'The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!' That's what William Dawes shouted as he took his midnight ride in 1775. But nobody paid much attention.

When Paul Revere took the same ride at the same time carrying the same message as William Dawes, he mounted enough support to defeat the British in Concord and begin The Revolutionary War.

This story is magically retold in Gladwell's book "Tipping Point". Revere's message went "viral". He had connections and he knew how to make his message heard. Dawes didn't. Viral communications is now the latest intellectual fad that has thousands of would-be entrepreneurs fooled into thinking their 3-cent instant-business is going to go ballastic.

All Dawes needed was text messaging and a well-populated address book linked to a good social-networking website. He could have been the hero of the moment, especially if Revere was one of those old-fashioned types who shunned technology in favour of old-school grit and determination.

Could the mobile phone liberate?

Certainly not from crazy ring-tone annoyance and other "invasion of decency" complaints mounting against it. It brings out the best of hypocrisy in us. We can't do without it, but don't like the constant bother of ringing and text-beeps - and, even more telling, we can't stand it when our calls go unanswered, no matter how often we hit "divert" when a call barges in.

However, perhaps its most telling contribution to the history of mankind, and freedom, is not within in our techno-spoilt Western shores, but has yet to unfold in other lands.

Bill Gates talks about giving everyone on the planet a computer (i.e. a copy of Windows) but perhaps he hasn't noticed that the mobile phone is going to beat him to it. Projections and reality are headed that way. And, the growth in some countries is 40%, including some African countries.

It is here, so Ajit Jaoker argues on his blog, that the mobile phone (actually, he argues, "mobile commerce") will do more for Africans than Live-8 ever could. He might be right.

So, who's going to provide the technology for this nascent African revolution? Well, it seems the Americans, no matter how much people want to fling mud at them for this-that-and-the-other affront to global harmony. Motorola's "Africa Phone" project is attempting to bring a mobile phone to the market for 20 dollars.

Now, no technology story would be complete without mentioning a romantic British contribution to its evolution, which, of course, has to end in the obligatory commercial failure despite its technical Brunel-esque brilliance. Moreover, the ship has to sink off the shores of America. I could go on here forever....

In case you didn't hear via viral text doo-dat, Sendo, Britain's only mobile phone maker hit the dust last week. Without doubt (they're British), they had some really good technology, including their instantly-customisable phone kit. Motorola bought Sendo, or at least their R&D team, just to get their hands on it.

Commentators, like Guy Kewney, have suggested that Sendo's technology will fit well with the Africa Phone project.

Bush might do little at the G8 towards saving the planet, but Motorola might. Come to think of it, G8 sounds like the name of one its new phones. If not, that's idea #70/100 please...(and idea #71, before any other Brit in his shed beats me to it, is to power the phones by wind-up mechanism and idea #72 is to make them out of non-toxic and non-greenhouse-gas inflammable materials for re-cycling as fuel. Patent applications are in the post.)

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Podcasting and don't say 'um' (or is it 'uh'?)

2005-07-01T15:17:00.000-07:00

Rob Griffiths at Macworld, in his assessment of podcasting, is also disturbed by those what-do-I-say-next "um", or is it "uh", sounds?

My friend and fellow Macworld author Kirk McElhearn has put together Kirk’s Seven Rules of Effective Podcasting, which is a great place to start. It’s probably not all-inclusive (I would have included “Don’t say ‘uh’ even once” as Rule No. 1), but it’s a good list of things to consider if you’re thinking about podcasting.

Another application for my umm-filter!
Perhaps they could be replaced with croaks instead...

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Your nearest WiFi zone is...

2005-07-01T04:38:00.000-07:00

Russell Buckley and his new Mobhappy blog posts about recent conclusions as to why location based services (LBS) haven't been successful. I posted my comments here...

Accuracy! That's what we need. We don't all congregate in Oxford Street (London) where there are more base stations than McDonalds and we can see the nearest cash machine anyway (and who needs cash?)

Most of us move in areas where we try to use LBS on the operator portal and the "nearest" whatever is always strangely near a cellular mast, somewhere past umpteen of the things you're actually looking for. I still recall attending an operator "developer forum" where the LBS "manager" said "we've done tests" and "users don't need the accuracy of GPS"....

Perhaps they're worried we might actually find the nearest WiFi hotspot...

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There's a frog on the line...idea #68/100...

2005-06-30T03:51:00.000-07:00

In the emerging all-IP world of converged wireless networks, courtesy of IMS, it's a cinch to add new services to the mix.

IMS allows services to be plugged in to the call pathway. In legacy networks that are circuit-switched, any processing of the audio pathway is usually a function of the switch, or some adjunct to it. This is switch-centric or switch-bound processing. For various reasons, it is not easy to add a new service to a switch. One reason might be that only the switch supplier can do it. This vendor lock-in means it will be expensive and slow to realise new services that are switch-centric. Consequently, telecoms operators are not abound with services.

IMS uses a method of call processing called SIP. It doesn't matter if you don't know what SIP is. What matters is that it is an open standard and it is easy to implement a piece of software that can "talk" SIP. With SIP-centric networks, there is no vendor lock-in. Potentially, anyone in a garage can develop a SIP-based service. Whether operators will allow this or not is another matter.

You can think of IMS as a router (as well as other things). If a user tries to make a call, their phone starts sending SIP signals through the IMS network. What the network can do is to say "Ah, this call is from Bob and as Bob is a subscriber to the 'insane toad' service, so I should route his call via the 'insane toad' server in case it wants to do something 'insane' for Bob".

Now that you understand the essence of IMS, I can introduce the "insane toad" idea. It is relatively simple with SIP to introduce audio into the call. This is needed in any case for things like announcements, such as "please wait while we divert your call..." etc.

Think of being able to introduce our own announcements. A SIP server can be hosted on the Web and have a web (or WAP) interface. We could upload our own announcements. However, "insane toad" goes a step further...

When the IMS network detects a call is being made by an "insane toad" service subscriber (all subscription information like this is stored in a big database called an HSS), the "insane toad" server can cause a screen to pop-up on the user's terminal.

What this screen does in this idea is to allow the user to select audio clips that they want to play during the call. If, for some unfathomable reason, they might like to hear a bizarre animated creature croaking or laughing, they could hit the "toad laugh" button and insert such a sound into the call.

Think of it as an audio version of smilie icons used in IM. In fact, this is how the service might work. The caller would select the icon for the sound and the callee would hear it and also receive the icon on the phone at the same time.

Using a Web-based front-end, users could upload their own clips, although I suspect that the operators would want control over the clips. I can't think why!

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Gataga, tagging, feedback - very cool!

2005-06-29T03:08:00.000-07:00

Earlier, I mentioned Gataga, the "social exploration" engine. Go check it out, if you haven't already.

In the post, I suggested that the mobile interface was inefficient. Now, I could have posted my feedback to Gataga, which ordinarily I would have done, but instead I just added the tag "Gataga" to my posting and waited....

....sure enough, the "codemonkeys" at Gataga eventually picked it up in the feeds and - even better and totally cool - they went and fixed the mobile interface and then told me in a comment to the original post.

That's customer service, that's tagging, that's speed, that's cool!
Thanks Gataga.

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Food-Oriented Lunch...

2005-06-28T02:27:00.000-07:00

In the world of massively complicated and expensive-to-run mobile operator networks, it is difficult to develop and deliver new services. An operator network, just like any other, is lots of computers and databases. These might be configured as switches, as text messaging centres (passing your message from your phone to another), as radio controllers, and all kinds of disparate functions. Most of these computers and databases have their own way of describing the information they contain and their own way of conveying it (i.e. protocols).

Most interesting services, such as some of the ones I have blogged about here in my 100-ideas series of postings, require a bit of this and a bit of that from the various disparate systems in the mobile network. This problem is not unique to mobile networks. Many networks in all kinds of businesses have similar problems.

Now it is inconceivable to write a software program that is going to run "across" the network on the various systems in order to achieve the service being sought, such as a push-to-taxi-air-tagging-cellular-socks service with cream on it!

However, what if we could write a "program" sitting somewhere in a network that asks all these disparate systems to do a bit of this (service A) and a bit of that (service B) and pass me back the results to co-ordinate (Orchestrate) a meaningful user service on behalf of a user. This "new" approach is called Service Orientated Architecture (SOA).

"Ah-ha!" I hear you say. "Isn't that obvious?".....
"Hasn't that been done already?"..."Surely, that's been done before!"....
"Wait a minute...isn't that what happens already?"

The answer is......

"YES!"

However, the way it is now being done is new and there is also a very important and strategic move within the operator world to develop the "platform" bit that glues all the services (bit of this, bit of that) together. These are called Service Delivery Platforms (SDP). They are important because it means there's potentially a single unified approach to developing and delivering new services, with greater speed and lower cost.

However, as with all these things, we have to cut through the usual barrage of buzzwords and separate out the chaff from the wheat, or the reality from the marketing hype. I found this comment on this blog about SOA very amusing...

I've decided that saying "Service-Oriented Architecture" is like saying "Food-Oriented Lunch" -- it sure sounds good when you're hungry, but you still have to decide how much you can afford to spend on it, which restaurant you're going to, and what you're going to order. And you still have to wonder whether or not you're going to have a massive case of food-poisoning afterwards. Show me an actual menu -- then I'll tell you if I'm impressed.

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A new approach to mobile email?

2005-06-24T06:54:00.000-07:00

Beware RIM! Despite being king of the mobile email world with Blackberry, your mobile email solution is going to be toppled soon unless you improve it.

Why?

Someone who understands email is going to come up with a better solution. RIM doesn't understand email in the "information organisation" sense. They understand email in the transport sense, i.e. mechanisms that makes sure things are secure and makes sure things get delivered on the move. They also understand sychronisation, especially with all those "dirty" low-level Exchange protocols. Granted, they also understand device design.

But why do I think that this apparently elegant mobile email solution, well liked by a few million, is in danger of becoming out-moded?

In case you haven't noticed, folders are out, searching is in. With the ability to search and retrieve information with powerful searching engines, the need to sort data into hierarchical folders is apparently in decline. This trend is well described by Jon Hiller.

Google are the exemplars of the search ethos and they have taken this a step further with Gmail, an online email service that does away with folders to organise email and uses labels ("tags", "keywords") instead.

Tagging is an important concept because it still allows user-intervention in information organisation processes, but doesn't impose a structure. For example, I can tag an email from a client with the tag "client", which means that it is now retrievable as a message from a "client" without the need to stuff it into a folder called "client". If I have a powerful search engine that can quickly retrieve messages tagged with "client", then this does away with the need for a folder called "client". Moreover, I can tag "client" messages with other tags, like "vip", or "chicago", or "nanotechnology", to indicate status, location and business activity respectively, and then search on these tags. I can use any tag I like and I don't have to worry about having sub-folders called "Chicago" etc.

However, I can also use rules to create tags. Just as we can use the Rules Wizard in Outlook to manipulate folder storage (i.e. routing to folders), there's no reason why we can't use the wizard to add tags. For example, I could create a rule that for all messages from "cool_client@cool..." add the tag "cool" and "client".

Also, we can use heuristics to generate tags automatically. For example, by looking at the percentage of emails I open from a sender and weighting this with the time interval between received (or accessed) and opened, I can automatically add tags like "vip" to the types of messages I open often and quickly, no matter the sender or the content.

Currently with my Blackberry, ALL of my email flows via the device. It is the single-user "Internet Edition", aimed at consumers (or prosumers). If ever there was a need to deviate from the standard "inbox" metaphor used by email for donkey's years (i.e. since the 70's), then it's mobile access. Innovation is required.

With tags, I could do things like open a current view on messages that are "vip", "cool", "project X" and "family". Only messages with these tags would be visible and cause an alert. However, with powerful search and fast wireless connections, all my other emails are only a click away! And, with better client implementation techniques, AJAX-like and with merged Web/local-data search, email providers will be able to offer slick, fast and usable interfaces. Also at our disposal will be generic push capabilities (unlike the Blackberry proprietary solution) that can also be used with thin-client implementations.

My instincts are that the emerging trend towards tagging and search-based approaches to email will enable a new approach to mobile email. Those that understand these trends, or drive them - like Google - will be well placed to deliver us highly usable mobile email solutions, well integrated with our Web-based email services, like Gmail or Oddpost.

I haven't gone into any implementation details, as I realised half-way through this posting that I would need a much lengthier article than my usual blog postings. Therefore, I might document these possibilities in more detail elsewhere.

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