Midweek Mobile News - Week 32

As per usual a collection of links regarding things that have happened in mobile this week that I have found interesting. This week decided to post midweek so as to break up the blog length and writing time ;-)

Mobile Tech and Gardening blog now available as an Nokia Ovi Application at http://store.ovi.com/content/50816 - After attending the Nokia develeoper event in London on the 3^rd of August I thought it might be fun to try out their Ovi Application Wizard. It’s OK as a distribution mechanism through the Ovi Store, but there are issues surrounding reporting that distribution. Outlined in the blog entry The Ovi Application Wizard - Any Good?. Still the whole process is ‘fun’ and I can see how non developers would see this as a giggle and worth trying.

QA with Niklas Savander, Nokia’s head of sales and marketing, on twitter http://bit.ly/c5CLMW - "Listening and learning" - Nokia’s head of sales and marketing braves the twitter-verse to have a chat. Interesting discussion and the continued theme of Nokia ‘Listening and Learning’ came through within the discussion. I hope they listen and learn well. With regard to the launch date of the N8 though Niklas says “As we have always said Q3”. So why was the Nokia developer event touted as the N8 launch event? I still think the more strong players in the developer eco-system within mobile the better innovation will be driven for the customer. I for one hope they do learn well!

APPL launches try before you buy apps http://awe.sm/596JA Would be better if it didn't just contain Lite apps. Fully leaded apps later? - I think this is a great idea. Allowing people to have a play with applications prior to them having to pay after you find out they are worthwhile. Unfortunatly the Apple implementation of this is not that great. The ‘Try Before You Buy’ section of the app store only contains Lite versions of applications. These are already freely available elsewhere in the app store so I still cannot see if the advanced features are worth paying for. Maybe in the future the fully leaded or complete apps will be available as try before you buy. Would be a good idea. Maybe Google will come up with a proper implementation of this first ;-). Wow here’s a thought maybe Ovi will! Would actually be a good idea for them to do this as well ;-)

Interesting blog about the longevity of the App store. Can they continually run at a loss? http://awe.sm/596PN Or are they a loss leader - this blog was inspired by the Nokia Developer Event as well. It is questioned how long the various developer portals can all co-exist especially when they are effectively run at a great loss. The thing is though developer access to tools to create applications for devices forms only one part of the smart phone device ecosystem. By far the largest part of the eco-system is the consumers. Lets face it the volume of consumers dwarfs the volume of developers. With the success of app stores it is clear that consumers like the vast choice of applications and new functionality that they can personalise their phones with. Sure there are a core set of applications that everyone goes for, but there are always new trending applications that people flock to. The core set of applications also greatly varies dependant on different demographics of users. Thus great application choice is, in my view, still a key driver to sales of handsets. Consequently the fact that developer relations, tools and market places cost money is just a fact of life. To create an ecosystem where you can allow developers to create and consumers to consume, costs money. If one is run as a loss leader to support volumes of sales in the other then there is no issue to run at a loss. Of course it’s a risk for Nokia to spend money in this area, however I think it is a far bigger risk not to. If you build the right tools, and perhaps Nokia can, then developers will use them. It’s all about distribution. Even if a tenth of the developers who develop for Apple start developing for Nokia this is a great result. Also just because there are two strong app stores currently does not mean there is enough competition. Mobile needs a strong Nokia and many other strong mobile developer eco-systems in order to fuel even more creativity for consumers.

250,000 apps so how do I get notcied!? Imagine if you were an author? 130 million books to choose from! http://awe.sm/596Y0 - This is interesting. So Apple has about 250K applications in its App Store and developers are wondering how they can get traction with respect to Customers seeing there application. Well imagine what it is like if you an author in a market that already has 130 million pieces of content to choose from! OK so not all 130 million books are in print but there are still a vast amount to choose from! Do you think we will start seeing second hand mobile app markets? Unlikely! The thing is, to be noticed you have to market. There are many ways to do this but you cannot rely on your app store of choice to do your marketing for you! Authors don’t expect libraries to do their marketing!

If you use Google Reader and have an Android phone try out the 'Talking RSS Reader' app. not perfect but still very cool! – I love this application. It will talk you through all of the unread items in your Google Reader account. OK the voice is not perfect but it’s pretty damned good! Also why I love the Android Market place. The innovation of some of the apps is just brilliant. I don’t use this everyday as I find reading easier in the long run, but when the text to speech analysis gets better and better I could see myself switching. Who knows your work commute radio station could be created by you with your Google Reader content ;-)

RT @malclocke How facebook engineering team have scaled up to 500 million users http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=409881258919 – I love reading about massive scalability of popular web services. Having to deal with 500 million users? Thank you very much! Although this does not really delve into any technical implementations it does highlight some very interesting processes i.e. deploying small upgrades individually and measuring if they work as well as the developer being responsible throughout the whole process. I love the fact that 3 people are responsible for the photos services on Facebook. A great site, that this was also reported on, for case studies and tips about massive scalability is http://highscalability.com/ Worth reading!

RT @feebeyer "How Google Can Take It To Facebook: Location" http://bit.ly/ax4dvQ (via @MobileHank ) -> Not sure I agree. - When I first read this I thought that I did not agree, however with further thought, Google really does have some great resources to make Location a differentiator. Google Maps yes, but even more so Android, which is shipping on an ever increasing number of devices. Combine maps and a device that knows where you are and the possibilities really become endless, whether that be for sharing purposes or for personal LBS services. I still firmly believe that location context firmly impacts the decision making process and being able to track this is of great value to the individual, as well as your social network. Not only knowing when a decision was made, but where can be of great power. How? That is firmly up to the individual to decide really, but providing tools to be able to manage this is a big first step.

Don't forget to signup for @overtheair http://overtheair2010.eventbrite.com Sept 10/11. Won't be able to make this one unfortunately :-( - Having a look at the Nokia Developer Summit (in London) registration costs over 500 Euro to attend! What? The Over The Air conference is free and there will probably be more developers there than marketers! Read into that what you will ;-) I missed last years one and regrettably I will miss this years one as well due to another commitment I cannot get out of. Will follow progress on twitter though!

Gowalla opens check in API http://awe.sm/59DW5 - "aspires to connect real people with real places." - I am a huge fan of the check in services Gowalla and Facebook. I use both of them but in different ways. Might save this for another blog entry at a later date. For these services to open up there API’s to allow other applications to check in is great. Gowalla want to distinguish themselves from the likes of foursquare by being fairer, i.e. you actually have to be in the location to check in at it. This I like as well, after watching the foursquare cheats! Here I am not pointing the finger at anyone in particular that might be checking in to locations in the UK when they are in Germany. Opening up a check in API is great as well as this gives application access to all of Gowalla’s users as opposed to having to generate a user base by yourself. Good for an application developer and also good for Gowalla as it distributes there service further. I am very tempted to start an idea we had 4 years ago against Gowalla now. Trouble is I need probably 2 developers to do it! Anyone have any good outsourcing options! ;-)

RT @highscalability NoSQL on the Microsoft Platform: NoSQL is a trend that is gaining steam primarily in ... http://bit.ly/9b2XIH - I like the concept of NoSQL in providing massivly distributed data sets allowing massively distributed services run out to millions upon millions of users. Another story on http://highscalability.com/. Seriously there are some great ideas on this web site about how the huge services have defined their architectures. There is so much to be learnt on this site. I don’t get back to it enough!

RT @MobileCrunch First Android Trojan Sends SMS Messages to "Premium Numbers" http://is.gd/ebwRp - this is a really bad instance of hacking on the AQndroid platform and such an obvious thing to do as a scam. It's times like these when the Apple review of submitted applications comes into its own. Is the Android platform shaping up to be the PC of the mobile world that is attacked by dodgy applications here there and everywhere. I certainly hope not! In this case resulting in charges being made against a Customer account. This is so trivially easy to do as well as there is no Customer verification required to send the odd premium SMS once in a while. Will Carrier Customer service ensure Customers are not liable to have to pay for this kind of attack. Not sure what the legal ramifications would be in this case? I think a hole can of worms is being opening round about now!

That’s it for this half week! More by the end of the week if I get time! I might not make it this end of week though! Lets see ;-)

Have fun and cheers

M