Everything and the Mobile Software Universe…

After the BenQ Black Box, Here is the Nokia one … with no button either (seen on pdafrance)

Update: It seems that TomSoft has been quicker than me on this one

GSM Association Press Release 2006 – GSMA announces shortlist for the first Asia Mobile Innovation Awards We are really proud to be part of this shortlist!

Linux not ready for mobile phones, Nokia exec says and this about some experiments they are working on: Nokia turns cellphones into webservers
This is pretty interesting and gave a good balance to the “all on linux” message.
At the end, what really matters are the services offered by th eplateform, and not the kernel…if you have the malloc/fopen/socket functions, do you really care if there is a linux kernel to implement the functions ? Guess no, only the services and their description are relevant, not their implementation, to digg this idea, see my post: Does mobile OS matters : no, it’s all about function. in response to this great one at Mobile Opportunity.
So nokia wants to run some “open-source” services (a browser, Apache) on their phones … and has realized that Linux is NOT mandatory to do that.
To come back to the web server article, I’ll quote the following:

[...]

• Interactive, contextual, and location-dependent content
  • Use the phone as a webcam
  • Find other mobile web sites in the proximity
  • Find out the location of a mobile website (cellid)
• Enabling new communication means without operator involvement
  • Send instant message
  • Leave instant message in the inbox
  • Leave a note on a mobile weblog
• Access core data
  • Access favorites, contacts, calendar, logs, and messages
  • Download images
  • Mount a read-write view of the root webserver directory and edit pages directly using WebDAV

[...]

The second point is particularly interesting: no need of the operator nor centralized servers to create services…the phone makers are back in the game to master as much as possible user content and phone usage…For me many things can be read between the lines with this experiment, pretty exciting to say the least!
Any comments are welcomed!

Here is a list of false good ideas for start ups: Rondam Ramblings: Top ten geek business myths. Really worth a read, found via the excellent LifeHack.org … and I must confess that we have to face some of the items of this list …but we are not in a so bad shape either!
Here is the summed-up list:

• Myth #1: A brilliant idea will make you rich. Perhaps not rich … but its realization may be lead to a lot of fun…and money can come after that
• Myth #2: If you build it they will come. FOR SURE, building is one thing (my part), selling it is another, at least as important: it’s what we’ve learnt it, both have to be well balanced.
• Myth #3: Someone will steal your idea if you don’t protect it. I really agree with this one, ideas are floating, people are changing jobs, etc…
• Myth #4: What you think matters. Hum, not sure about this: if my CEO doesn’t think that, I’ll begin to worry …
• Myth #5: Financial models are bogus.??? How to do without? How to convince VC’s?
• Myth #6: What you know matters more than who you know. This one is more balanced for me, both crucial
• Myth #7: A Ph.D. means something. Hum this is a so US comment, in France a PhD is not a big deal for sure, compared to a “Grande Ecole”, anyway yes, studies ARE important, to show strong abstarction power (so synthetical mind) and culture (for vision)
• Myth #8: I need $5 million to start my business Depends on what you want to build …but you need money if you wan’t to be more than 2 people in a garage.
• Myth #9: The idea is the most important part of my business plan. It is only a part.
• Myth #10: Having no competition is a good thing. Completely agreed. Your Competitor shows that there is a market, and help greatly your positioning.
• Special bonus myth (free with your paid subscription): After the IPO I’ll be happy. I hope I’ll be able to comment on this one someday

As usual a great read from Mobile Opportunity: Mobile Opportunity: Facing reality in the mobile industry. It describes how difficult is it to build a new application/services for the Mobile Phone market, taking a great example : SKYPE. It’s a mix of hardware issues, and software compatibilities.
Tarek talks about the old CDMA/GSM battle and the Ultra Low Cost Market:
It’s A GSM Kinda Developing World. Imagine, we have not even set and agreed on the radio technology, the processor is converging to ARM (7 for some, 9 or event 11 for others), so don’t talks about the software/services plateform!…but is it a bad thing after all? Ok interoperability is a big great thing … but to have no limits in the creativity is perhaps even more important at the end, to choose the right Hardware/software combination to reach target prices.

Vision Mobile has a good post on Diversity :
User interfaces and soft walled gardens of tomorrow Brands have a real strength, this is not a dull windows/Mac/KDE/Gnome world. Nokia means something, Sony Ericsson also…. they have great UI specifications, and strong brand awareness.

Good article at brighthand about input entry methods : The Writing in Your Hand.
I firmly think that voice is not a natural way to communicate with a computer, or write a message, and if you have already tried DragonDidacte/IBM Via Voice, you know how painful it is : the issue is not the recognition engine accuracy, but that you don’t write like you talk!, sounds obvious…You need to talk as if you were writting, not so easy, and not effortless. In France Orange has changed its voice mail machine to answer to voice commands like “callback”, “delete”,”next”,”previous”…and you know what? Technically it works like a charm, ergonimically it’s hum..crappy , you really felts like an idiot talking (giving orders) to your phone (ok ok, this one seems paradoxical). Talking is a human affair, and talking with a non sentient entity, (a pedantic name for a machine ) IS un-natural. It is why I agree with the last conclusion of the brighthand article: new entry methods have to be found!

Nothing related but here is a potentially very interesting new 3D display technology, seen at Engadget:
NTT DoCoMo unveils portable 3D display – Engadget

Mobile shopping may become much more attractive, and … and did you say games!
If you add movement detection for gesture commands … a “brave new world” of user interactions may be opened!

MEX – the strategy forum for mobile user experience – Zi makes progress with Qix

I’ve missed this one … even if we are working with Zi as an IP provider for predicitve text input, I’ve never heard about Qix (see the Zi Qix Web Sit).
It really looks like the Palm Treo Initiate launcher : use any bit of information to quickly access the data … errrr everything is about data those days (see my 3 to 4 previous posts). In the case of Qix it is only text, but for initiate it is also voice,… google search on the phone anyone? coupled with applications to display and use the found data…: THIS is interesting, and a good alternate way to the menustrees.
I am a convinced defensor to the all-flat-search-by-content organization oposed to the classical folder trees (perhaps because I’m NOT organized , see my post about desktop search engines ). It should be pushed a little more to also launch actions, etc. Definitively something to keep in mind for user interactions!

they also bought Decuma it seems, a very powerfull text recognition engine for stylus input (found an the defunct Sony Clié PalmOS devices).

Great read from TomSoft about Mobile Ajax:
TomSoft » Myths of mobile Web2.0 (and mobile Ajax).

Really in line with what Thomas said, especially this point :

…Ajax applications will run the same on mobiles than on PC, and this will save us some porting costs. Wrong! Seems that the Write Once Run Anywhere myth is back!! It was actually already not achievable through technology designed for this, so I did not see how Ajax app…

Same for me … the more I work in this industry with european, chineese,Korean partners the more I see:

• How skilled they are
• NO UNIFORMITY : for each client, and even for each phone for each clients, many things are different and can’t be abstracted generalizing a concept.
• Requirements are from Operators (Carriers), Graphic Designers etc… and no one has the same approach for UI and data representation…

A good technology should help this diversity and free the creativity of those actors… wrong idea to lock them in one scheme, one way to do … how will they differentiate?
Customization is key, and is not at all limited to theme, colors and image, but of the whole software …this is our vision here at open-plug

Thanks moPocket for the video!

Ok it Seems a little bit SciFi for now, but after all look at the VK 2020 or the latest korean “card size” phone are not so distant (ok appart the flexibility ).
But what is even more surprising is the software depicted in the video : it is adapting to the user and any context … so far from our little applications and their static icones, a BIG step further compared to the previous post about live UI.

:: mobiface :: next gen mobile interface thoughts  : Wow great idea! The background image is going more cloudy when the network strength is going down…neat!