Everything and the Mobile Software Universe…

Just a little post to share this good news :GSM Association Press Release 2006 – Microimage & Open-Plug Take Top Prizes at Inaugural Asian Mobile Innovation Awards…great!

In this blog we talk a lot about developpement frameworks in the mobile space, which are close to “traditional” framework (like GNOME, Qt, Windows, MacOS, even Java in less extent), but newcomers are popping … from the web space.
I’ve played recently with a great CMS (hum : a blog engine on steroid) Drupal to developp as quickly as possible an in-house test cases/release quality report system for our test teams, a weekly tracking tool for my team and some other stuffs: I’m NOT a php/javascript/XML/HTML junky, I’m a C/C++/algorithmics dev, and … doing that was EASY and FAST, and I must say efficient.
The biggest positive points that have popped out:

• Documentation of PHP/Drupal : amazing, clear, dense, …neat
• Data formalization (RSS feeds and XML)
• Powerfull presentation framework that let me concentrate on the job

If we compare those point to exisitng frameworks, some are really missing : Documentation of course is not only many time missing, but when it is present, it has been written by code monkeys, certainly good at coding and architecture, but not for teaching and giving fun (I’ll quote here one of my Kathy Sierra favorite post never underestimate the power of fun). Data formalization: it is a joke today in the C/C++ world, where is easy serialization? Database?. Presentation framework : ok you have some exisitng but you still have to fight with widget mechanics…boring and bug prone.

It is where new web frameworks may bring something new, I’ve spotted 2 at this time:

• Ruby on Rails
• OpenLaszlo (found again via TomSoft)

Ruby on Rails is really pushing the MVC (Model View Controller see my post here and here) paradigm to its limits, with a clean high level language….I’ll try to use it as soon as possible.

OpenLaszlo claims to bring the desktop power to web applications … and the approach seems greats (look at the examples) : the UI is described in clean XML, then everything is compiled in Flash or DHTML, AJAX stuff/javascript are hidden.

So it will be time to bring this kind of technologies to mobile developement … and constraints… Flash today is perhaps too RAM and CPU consuming (but I’m sure it will change). Making things too easy has also its drawbacks, especially in an area where customization is a key differenciator, see also this Kathy’s post about ease of use.

At Open-Plug we already have a clean, all recoded GTK that is running on Ultra Low Cost phones with no issues, for me the next step would be to add some more formal and high level UI descriptions, and some better data modeling to come close…We have begun, and it is exciting!

I’m happy to see that in France we are not anymore a third world country in respect to broadband access, and I really think it is thanks to the ADSL operator Free who is always pushing the envelop for new technologies (triple and even quadruple play, Freebox HD…) followed by the others, forced to play the technology game (orange, neuf, alice and club internet above all).
It is why it is really great seeing new Wifi/GSM telephony offers: Neuf/Cegetel Twin, Orange Unik, and Free offer (some photos of the Free phones).
It is why reading this new from the exellent MobileCrunch was not a surprise:
MobileCrunch » T-Mobile Announces Launch of UMA, Dual Mode Handsets … this seems to be a big trend with wifi expanding quickly at home. The Kineto Wireless white paper is really worth a read to understand the involved technologies. Only the Orange offer seems to be really UMA compliant with a clean handover from Wifi to GSM (but not the other way round…)
The Free approach to give everyone 2 MIMO boxes is really wize: in big citie the Free Wifi coverage will be amazing …
Update: MobileCrunch has post a new article about UMA.

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).