Everything and the Mobile Software Universe…

First a A4 Electronic Sheet of paper by Philips/LG Technology, found via Clubic:

This sheet of electronic paper is based on the E-Ink technology, and is able to display 4096 colors, for a 180 line of sight… with a thickness of only 300 micrometers. Battery friendly the E-Ink technology is only consuming juice when display is changing.

Then this one from Sony (thanks I4U):

A completely different technology: OLED/organic TFT on a flexible substrate, size of 2.5 inch and a resolution of 120*160 pixel …and 16,7 millions colors.
100 cd/m2 brightness, 1,000:1 contrast ratio and 300 micrometers thickness.

Great , the E-Ink technology is hanging around for years now, but really it is, for me, the most credible replacement to paper … if it needs to be replaced after all: I don’t know for you but the majority of what I read is on screen (computer, smartphone, nokia tablet), and what is not … it is BDs , books where the reading experience of paper is hard to challenge.

The OLED one is really interesting : imagine a device where a big screen is rolled inside, and you only deeply it when needed (either a smartphone or a laptop…).

Some great things are coming….and just for fun: the Teleglass T3-F to watch TV when commuting

Boo Hoo for You!

Look at what is possible to do in Japan and Korea compared to Europe. Nice and fun initiative from symbian…
It’s Kitsch …yes for sure…but fun for sure:

I’m really avid of Flash Lite informations…and it seems that this post at the always exellent VisionMobile fit my bill perfectly:

VisionMobile Forum :: Flash Lite: Facts and Figures

Especially interesting (at least for me ) is the following:

Flash Lite Technology:
1.5MB: size of Flash player for PCs
400K: size of Flash Lite 2 for mobile devices
300K: the target size for Flash Home product, built on Flash Lite (based on the technology acquired from ActImagine)
ARM 9 with 32/32MB ROM/RAM running at 150MHz: lowest-spec phone embedding Flash Lite, according to Adobe.
BREW extensions: the technology Verizon uses to automatically download and install the Flash Lite player on 12 supporting handsets.

VisionMobile Forum :: Flash Lite: Facts and Figures

So it seems that we are still not in the “low to middle” cost phone range of the spectrum…still a little bit high-end, but it is shrinking and it will continue to do so, thanks to the Actimagine acquisition (cococrico!) .

Another good read about Adobe Open-Sourcing startegy:

How Adobe can overcome the issues around open sourcing the Flash Player Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 2:32 am…

…..But the rise of Flash also means that Adobe has less incentive to open the Flash Player, and at this stage, I can’t fault them for keeping it proprietary. I’d love to see them open it, and after talking with Ted, I think they can do it and still keep business as usual, but I wouldn’t expect it any time soon. The path is open though, so we can wait and see.

How Adobe can overcome the issues around open sourcing the Flash Player | The Universal Desktop | ZDNet.com

Seems to be a great technology: Sensear: Noise-cancelling, Voice-amplifying hands-free system – IntoMobile . Active noise cancellation, and voice amplification at the same time…I would REALLY want to know more about their algorithms. Definitively something great here to at least improve the NUMBER ONE feature of a phone: voice. We don’t have to forget it, see this good article over at Mobile Web Tablet:

So, what’s the killer application for all those mobile devices? Is it search? Music downloads? Widgets? Well, not quite. It’s worth remembering that the three most important applications for mobile phones are: 1. Voice. 2. Voice. 3. Yepp. You guessed it: voice. And then SMS and then nothing and then nothing and then mobile ring tones. Sort of. The funny thing about this is how little innovation there has been in the voice application domain

The Mobile Web Tablet : 3 billion phones and counting!

Really great article to read: The Google Phone: Fact, Fiction and a Huge Link List (via TomSoft) .

I especially been ..not so surprised… about their supposed software stack:

Venture capitalist Simeon Simeonov cites an inside source, who reports the Switch will be “Blackberry-like,” with a “C++ core,” “optimized Java, [and] vector-based presentation,” as well as VoIP and other services.

The Google Phone: Fact, Fiction and a Huge Link List

The vector-based presentation seems to come from their Skia buyout:

One, Skia touted itself as a developer of 2D graphic software for mobile devices, set-top boxes and what it called emerging products.The language was contained on a Web site once operated by Skia. Skia’s first product, SGL, is a portable graphics engine capable of rendering state-of-the-art 2D graphics on low-end devices such as mobile phones, TVs, and handhelds, the Web site said. SGL is feature-set compatible with existing 2D standards, making it ideal to serve as a back-end for public formats such as SVG, PDF, and OpenVG. SGL is licensed as source or binary, and can be customized to match specific HW/framebuffer requirements..

Google Comes Out of the Shadows in N.C.: Search Engine Giant Has Software Operation in Chapel Hill :: WRAL.com

The java vision from the Danger guys they hired, the kernel is probably Linux….

Hum I really don’t get why Java is needed in the middle (Savaje anyone??), but here we go with a brand new complete embedded platform!…over crowded? we can say so. (MS, Symbian, Qtopia, Motorolla linux, Access, Open Moko, Palm, Ajar, Brew, EMP, MSX gaxoo, Open-Plug (in some extent), SKT Linux, Sky Mobile Media, Sasken and so on)

Anyway, for sure it won’t be a low cost phone! … but we are all waiting for it.

Will it be open? What kind of hardware? Is it a complete phone software stack or a companion framework? for sure a server side is on the works….so a next generation of On Device Portal?

MSX is releasing gaxoo : it seems to be an embedded graphical framework plus a server side part to manage subscribers: very interesting, I really would want to know what kind of technologies they are using.

From their press release:

The MSX Platform extends this ODP functionality to include complete
control of phone functionality as well as the ability to download
new phone applications (also known as widgets). These can vary
from RSS/Blog widgets through to photo sync, branded media
players, storefront and customized promotions.

The xPhone UI works on a variety of high-volume consumer phones
and employs advanced visual effects including alpha transparency,
gradients, anti-aliased vector graphics, fast dynamic scaling and
rotation, as well as 3D transitions.

Really good read over at : The Mobile Web Tablet : The Mobile OS of the future is…

The bulk of most services will be on a web server. Google Maps Mobile, Widsets, Opera Mini or Gmail are all good examples of extremly capable mobile applications supported by a strong web service. These are all java applications, but as web browsers in mobile phones grow more capable we will see XHTML or Flash Lite-based applications. Widgets, if you like that term.

The Mobile Web Tablet : The Mobile OS of the future is…

Yes and this is a point I’ve discussed already (Back to the future mainframe, centralized computing anyone?) where the clear split between local and server is fading away, but is it really applicable to mobile phones? Not sure for now due to the high latency of the current mobile IP networks, but things are only beginning to be sorted out in the PC world…Mobility is next, for sure.

Web Developments frameworks (like Adobe Flex, MS Silverlight) are already migrating little by little to the mobility space, especially through the crop of On Device Portals that are, more or less services delivery platforms, with a “rich client” on the device, running some kind of Ajax/flash/svg/xml/javascript (put your favorite widget/UI/web2.0 technology here) framework to deliver “content”, content being here the service.

Ray Ozzie recently presented MS silverlight, outlining the following interesting trend:

Ray Ozzie outlined two types of web apps – what he calls “Universal Web” apps, meaning ajax, html, browser based apps. Then he discussed “Experience First” apps – xbox, mobile, pc desktop apps. He pointed out that “the most sucessful solutions have an element each of universal web and experience first”.

Ray Ozzie Keynote at MIX, Las Vegas

So really this is about integrating and adapting:

• On one side the service itself: how to render it, implement it as best as possible.
• On the other side: the device on which it is used: the write once runs everywhere mantra is definitively dead, long live to adaptative or even adapted software!

I’ll quote again the same Mobile Web Tablet article:

The problem with todays phones is not about access to the native OS, but rather how the web or downloaded applications are second grade citizens within the phone GUI. This, however, will change.

Nokias recent move to integrate a widget platform in S60 is a sign of exactly what I’m talking about. Sony Ericssons multitasking java and standby midlets are some other and so is the Apple iPhone. Good and useful widgets are really just a small window to a much larger web service.

The Mobile Web Tablet : The Mobile OS of the future is…

I sort of agree with this comment: service integration is KEY, and while VERY difficult right now, next generation UI (iPhone, LG Prada, SonyEricsson Feature phones (not smartphones, UIQ is for me inferior to their mainstream but I digress), etc) perhaps won’t help cause when a graphical designer is involved to define the whole SUI, it is very very difficult to complement it with new services from the outer world without compromising the phone UI integrity: this is where the notion of “system”, as a collection of services and “Master of Ceremony” of those services interactions is coming to life (I’ll certainly comment much more on this notion on my blog later…).

On the other hand I’m not sure that access to natives phone hardware and services is enough today for mass market phones (this is after all on of the Open-Plug purpose ).

Something I’m not sure today is how those kind of service platforms will be implemented: after all mobile phones are still, and will be for a foreseeable future and for the biggest part of the market really low CPU, low RAM devices, so I’m not sure how to technically leverage this service approach on the mass market (see here for some data ..but my point of view has evolved since then ) , but I’m looking for

It seems that C. Enrique Ortiz is also digging , and found with Dojo an interesting property: working cleanly offline:

But Dojo off line touches on a very important and needed characteristic, a key feature that future mobile web browsers must support: “The ability to work disconnected”, or “Support for disconnected or off line browsing (cache), allowing the Mobile Web application operate as an occasionally connected application”

C. Enrique Ortiz Mobility Weblog

And you? any clue? vision on what this platform will be?