Everything and the Mobile Software Universe…

Hello all…

Last week I attended the Open Source in Mobile conference in Madrid, at which I could get a demo of the “One-Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) XO device from Jeff Waugh, a prominent figure of the GNOME project.

For those of you not familiar with this project, the “One-Laptop Per Child” foundation wants to bring laptop computers to schoolchildren in developing countries. I will not here dwell on the price or success of the device, but rather focus on its software and really innovative user interface.

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I’m back ….before some more complete article : here is a great one about Data Visualization:

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches | Graphics

example:

Shape Of Song: What does music look like? The Shape of Song is an attempt to answer this seemingly paradoxical question. The custom software in this work draws musical patterns in the form of translucent arches, allowing viewers to see – literally – the shape of any composition available on the Web.

So here it comes: a portfolio of web services pushed by an operator, SFR, the french Vodafone. Check for details here (sorry in french):Six géants d’Internet s’associent  SFR en illimité.

Here is a quick summary:

SFR is launching a  best of web  offer, with 6 top of the line services accessible through its Vodafone Live portal.

1. DailyMotion, accessible through a java application that allows a user to send its own videos: it has been done in 2 Months by SilverBlack Wireless (formerly french Cellcast Interactif). Before the end of the year a richer application (java also?) will be available (comments, etc). DailyMotion has signed a 6 months exclusivity with Vodafone. . User pays “only” for bandwidth                                
2. YoutTube: certainly accessible through its mobile version (http://m.youtube.com). No Vodafone exclusivity. User pays “only” for bandwidth
3. Windows Live Messenger, available through the Miyowa solution (server + client midlet): 4 euros per month for unlimited use (!!) or cost is equivalent to one SMS by message sent (!!!). seems expensive but Bouygues has 80000 subscribers for the same service, little cash cow? .                                                                                                                                                                
4. eBay: eBay Mobile by Streamezzo (through their java client): free access (apart from connexion costs), products search, possibility to bid, etc. One month exclusivity to sfr for this mobile access.                                                                          
5. Google Maps: well you know it already
6. MySpace: Mobile version access (WAP/simple web or java app??) … but with a business model like done in the US: access to messages, music and video…for 3 euros per months or 0.5 euros per day of use. In the US (helio and AT&T I think have deployed the service), there were 200k users in 6weeks at 3$ per month, 2$ for MySpace, 1$ for the carrier (The main site has an estimated 55 million users, and MySpace.com is the second-most-viewed-website in the U.S. just behind Yahoo and ahead of Google — and accounts for 12 percent of online advertising).

Here is the pricing model of sfr for bandwidth:

• A “per data session” of 2 Mo at 0.5 euros, for the access to those services
• For the first 50 000 :9.90 euros per months for unlimited access to those  best of web  services + 25 Mo of portal DATA+ unlimited email

  • Web services are here, rushing to the mobile…and can propose a non free business model with no advertisement with no complexes: people seems ready to pay!
  • MIDP, MIDP, MIDP : as it is the only way today to deploy massively services so it is the only viable technology….today.
  • In at least 3 of this 6 cases, a third party (Miyowa, SBW, Streamezzo) has been involved/in charge of the Mobile development and strategy (even in the MS case!) => Mobility is still an “expert only” area, new actors may have a role here.
  • Vodafone is no more willing to redefine itself the user experience of those services, it (at last!) leaves it to the service providers themselves…it is perhaps time for the Andreas Container Projects? to help those kind of deployment, with no to little OEM involvement?

• For the others, 2 plans  Vodafone Live +unlimited emails with 5 Mo or 25 Mo of additional data (off portal??) for 5 euros and 9.90 euros respectively per month

So some quick comments:

Any comments on those last statements?

Hi all

For my first post here, I have decided to just be an aggregator, i.e. spare you the hassle of browsing through all these blogposts about the most-hyped CE product ever: the iPhone… now you have it all here summarised in neat bullet points.

Kudos to Engadget Mobile for their extensive review, The Register for their numerous and humorous articles, as well as iFixit for their step-by-step reverse engineering.

Also worth noting that there is now a very extensive entry for the iPhone on Wikipedia.

In short: it’s a great device in terms of usability and design (so long as you share Apple’s tastes), but suffers quite significant shortcomings when it comes to business productivity (notably due to its poor email application) and lack of capability to have 3rd-party applications installed.

/Guilhem

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Checkout this amazing Video from : Microsoft Surface Video – Touchscreen, Multi Touch Coffee Table – Behind the Scenes – Popular Mechanics

Official Microsoft web site

Ok, it not new, but really not so far from production

Diagram by Intoaroute

Something that really buzz me about those new kind of interfaces is obviously the “home” and “personal” application and services, but I see also some possible tremendous change for the software development : with the raise of multi-core, parallel programming will be mandatory, and to leverage this horsepower, a paradigm shift is needed, to break the C/C++/C#/php/ruby, etc sequential view. And this new paradigm may be graphical programming. See this LabView/QNX article or this one at DevX:

The U.S. government, through DARPA, had previously awarded contracts to proposals for High-Productivity Computing Systems. A major premise of this thrust is that the performance of computers is outstripping our ability to harness the power through programming. It is logical to conclude that we need better methods to program them, and DARPA had funded three research languages. All three programming languages are textual X10, Chapel, and Fortress. It seems that the research has run its course, and the answer is that the breakthrough opportunities fall short of the grand hope of catching up with computers. This just makes me wonder all the more if a graphical approach will ultimately be an avenue for a programming breakthrough.

Technologies like those multi-touch screen may bring a lot to the developer ability to dig and build his system….and it is needed: look how poor are the current graphical languages in the “graphical” and above all the user interaction aspect: (below a LabView screenshot)

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?