I have been reading about the open handset alliance and collaborative work by 30+ companies using open standards for a new operating system for mobile phones. It caught my attention as I join the chorus and require a company or some entity to spark innovation and accelerate new apps for the phone decks. It’s almost here?
From a “Wireless Week” article, “today’s smartphones run on several different operating systems, most of which are based on proprietary technology even though they may be open to a certain extent to developers. On the opposite side of Android’s world has been Apple’s iPhone, which was completely closed until its recent introduction of a software developer’s kit (SDK).”
I cant believe its 2008 and as consumers, we are still relying on the carriers and their “slow to market” approach with developing new consumer friendly products. I completely understand and appreciate the tradeoffs with opening up a mobile platform. The economics become quite unfavorable to the carriers, not to mention the seemingly insurmountable risks of viruses and other “bad actors” with users ability to build new apps for a former “walled garden”. Not trivial but as we have seen from the past few years with the web, open standards and access for developers to build great products are required for truly great leaps in product. Carriers actually can become less indentured to OEM manufactures and may actually be able to innovate with Android? According to MediaPost’s SearchInsider, “80% of all U.S. mobile Web activity takes place on-deck (inside the carriers’ walled garden of content) whereas internationally 80% of activity occurs off-deck.”
It seems for the mobile platform to take off (video, community, location based apps, etc), we cant rely solely on developments from the carriers, but instead need to also harness some of the mojo from the likes of Facebook/Google/MySpace where users are interacting and building interesting new products. Combine that with some of the mojo from startups like Slide to build fun and zany new products for the mobile screen and the mojo from opening up platforms and allowing creative juices to flow (think of all that longitude/latitude data that is now available)!
The alliance for the open handset includes companies from the mobile operator industry (KDDISprint, T-mobile, etc), companies from the semi-conductor industry (Broadcom, Nvidia, Marvel, etc), handset manufactures which include the likes of (Samsung, LG, Motorola, etc) and from various software companies including (eBay, LiveWire, Google, SkyPop, etc).
Their efforts are to build out Android, a unified set of code built on an open platform (a la Linux Kernal). “Android™ will deliver a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications. An early look at the Android Software Development Kit (SDK), is available.”
With Google promoting a $10m Android challenge (for new product dev) it is exciting to think about the possibilities. Combine this with T Mobile’s launch of the 3G network starting in NYC….things are about to get crazy! I wonder if there will be collaboration to buy spectrum and create a whole new network?
Finally, we all know what will really drive innovation and new product dev is the dollar. According to Juniper Research, “despite the incredible growth forecasted for mobile ad revenue — over $1 billion in 2008 and $7.6 billion in 2013 — it’s still a drop in the $500 billion global ad bucket.” But, its a chicken and the egg. Make the platform compelling and dollars will come.
Song was recommended to my by a former colleague. The images in the video are particularly of interest as they were shot in Vietnam and Cambodia, amongst other places I have visited in the past few years.
The song’s first 4-5 minutes are made up primarily by bass, drum and piano compilations. The singing at the end almost seem superfluous.
Just came across this video with Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz describing the Android mobile platform. I joined the AndroidDevelopers group on Youtube to hear more about what this entails.
From the video, they provided a glimpse of the Android stack, 3G speeds, open GLS API, ability to work with 2D an 3D images, amongst other things. The video also highlights the maps application built into the platform as well as street views for “on the ground” seekers who are curious about an up close and personal review of a place/monument/building, etc.
Sergey finished up with the announcement of a $10m prize for the best app on Android.
Question: does he fear that people will build mostly inane apps such as SkinFlix or Superpoke a la Facebook? Does he care? Or, is he trying to grease the wheels and make this the predominate developers platform and induce innovation before another mobile offering hits and developers need to chose where to spend their time building apps? Follow up question - isnt this all predicated on mobile devices being enabled for app upload?
One of my favorite topics when discussing product development and the web is “visualization”. The ability to incorporate a visual element with new product offerings is paramount to its success IMHO. A visual element that increases the product’s functionality and/or enables the user to search/find/interact at deeper levels is a key success metric for me.
Having worked in the online financial news publishing space for some time, visualization of data (structured and unstructured) was of great interest to me. Creating the next version of stock charts and portfolio tools was a notable challenge.
Google Finance made some headway with their charting app and Nasdaq’s intra day charting product based on Adobe AIR shows great promise. AOL’s Money channel and beta version of their portfolio tool (via their purchase of Relegence) also could be a game changer and will hopefully elevate the static nature of the commoditized portfolio and charting apps in the marketplace today.
While reviewing innovative and smart design sites, I came across the site VisualComplexity and was intrigued with the social graphs and software that created visual representations of relationships, whether they be Facebook or MySpace profiles or the Japanese blogosphere (for example). Fascinating use of the design elements while incorporating large data sets and providing a visual cue in which to review relationships and dependencies.
Side note: I just downloaded Screengrab, a Firefox “add on” so I could place a picture or two for this entry. No luck with that specific option!
Just added the new beta Google Reader to my IPhone deck. I added the MSN mobile offering to my IPhone deck last week and was not blown away. The Google Reader icon is “cool” and the product loaded pretty fast, vs other browers that seem to stall out or take a year and a day to load. Maybe this is the edge network and/or AT&T related dependencies and issues vs the web browser experience?
Will play around with Google’s new reader and see if increases my news consumption. I often find with Reader online that I rarely click on the headlines and actually don’t consume all that much news via this format due to headline overload. Not sure why the usage is different than MyYahoo that I religiously use online and customize and mouse over for expanded views.
Today was the drop date for Google’s launch. As TechCrunch reported, “….like Data Availability and Facebook Connect, Google’s Friend Connect will be a way to securely send personal profile data, including friend lists, presence/status information, etc., to third party applications….” Google wants to obviously become the central hub for personal info. Whomever stores the personal info, by defacto, becomes the “social networker”. Own the end user data…own the user. Thus, the article suggests Google needs big sites to partner with…so the littles one follow along down the road with Open Social.
A busy week for such annoucements. MySpace launched their “Data Availability” which allows for data portability. Facebook launched “Facebook Connect” which allows users to take their friend connections and data points as captured in one of these social networks.
Here is a thought experiment that is a bit tangential? What if the API model on Facebook was flipped? What if sites, lets say a news site, opened up their API, and allowed users to upload widgets onto their site? For example, what if you started your day every morning with NYT.com. What if NYT.com opened up their APIs and allowed for third party widget upload? Instead of going to Facebook or MySpace for one’s “social networking”, a user could continue using their favorite site (in this case a news site). Or, what if I like NYT but dont want to crawl the five or ten other news sites…instead I grab their widgets and upload them onto a page of NYT where I can get a side by side snapshot for that vertical’s offering? A Yahoo Finance killer?
The wider web, taking a playbook from the open source movement, could develop widgets for news sites, sports sites, weather sites, etc. Instead of all these “silly” Facebook apps, site specific apps might unleash some creative juices and allow apps that appeal to a broader audience (ie the ones that visit NYT.com or CNN.com, etc). Open Social could power this exercise as it would be helpful to have a central repository with all this app creation.
The question that still needs to play out is who really owns the underlying data and what privacy concerns should be brought to the forefront for a healthy, public debate and discussion? For example, Google still captures one’s search queries and stores the info for filtering and analysis to make their search results “more accurate”. I understand this tradeoff…but lets say I didnt want Google to use my info and/or I wanted to wipe away my info from their servers. Can I? Right now..not that I am aware of.
Same holds true for the social networks. Removing a Facebook account or MySpace account isnt exactly easy nor trivial for a user. I wouldnt be so confident if I chose to remove my account that my information isnt being stored for some future use?
The topic of user data and ownership becomes really fascinating with the advent of mobile and GPS based location data. If every new phone has a GPS system with long/lat info being continuously sent back to a carrier for a given person’s whereabouts, it is not hard to concoct the various scenarios where algorithmic or predictive modeling could garner benevolent or malevolent situations for the end user. What if I dont want Sprint, or AT&T to monitor my exact whereabouts and / or sell this information to a third party who wants to mine this…even if in an aggregated format?
Interesting developments as it relates to personal data, storage, privacy and the numerous tradeoffs from our online behaviors.
Interesting article on Second Life in the WSJ.com this weekend. Director Douglas Gayeton filmed a documentary not about Second Life and the founder Philip Rosedale (who coincidentally comes from my hometown of Bonita, CA) but on the social structures developing within the animated environs of Second Life during an eight month immersion.
Challenges of crowd control and sets plagued the film maker as described in the article. As you might imagine in a virtual world, “…. I’d shoot something one day and come back the next day and it wasn’t there.” I found that quite amusing…and certainly not a trivial variable if I was constructing a story for a documentary.
“The ten-part “Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey” premieres Thursday on Cinemax and online in Second Life. Parts of the series will also be available on YouTube and iTunes.”
I wonder if it will focus on the animal “issues” and social interaction of the Second Life participants that were supposedly one of the reasons why Rosedale stepped down from the day to day operations?
Yahoo’s product development efforts of late are starting to make some noise. Rightfully so. IMedia and TechCrunch recently covered these “bright light” topics. Yahoo’s “buzz” button is now being deployed on various sites around the web, including People.com, SI and WSJ’s “AllThingsD“. This digg competitor is a traffic driver for third party content sites as the button enables content provider’s stories to surface on Yahoo’s front page if readers/people “buzz it”. A powerful funnel to drive content to yahoo’s front door.
Yahoo is also making a splash with their project Glue and SearchMonkey. In beta format and currently only launched abroad, “Yahoo Glue, which is only available on the company’s India portal, combines pictures, text and videos into a single search result page.”
This evolution to a semantic web experience allows users to customize search results and how they are displayed. I saw the schemas for both Glue and Search Monkey last time I was at Yahoo’s south bay campus and was quite excited at the direction they were taking.
While there is alot of noise and distraction on Yahoo’s executive floor, with discussion around corporate structure, strategy with the bankers, consultants and lawyers hammering away over terms for a combined entity, etc - the product managers in the trenches are thinking big thoughts and unleashing innovation that Yahoo historically was known for.
I await further developments and am excited for the product teams at Yahoo. May they launch quickly!
Wired magazine wrote a very interesting article on the first “massively multi-user online music festival”. MMORPG’s (massively multi-player online role playing games) gained popularity (and revenue - over $1b in 2006) in the past few years as client side computing power increased, interconnectivity rates expanded and robust third party software was made available. Variables that also helped this medium gain momentum were the numerous titles such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft that were produced and that appealed to a mass audience (a 35 year old white-collar worker could fight evil warlords alongside his/her colleague(s) vs an 18 year old traditional consumer of online video games).
The online music “analog” is seemingly here. This could be revolutionary! After speaking with a friend who attended Coachella in southern california and hearing about her exasperation on suffering from 100+ degree heat, traffic, lack of bottled water, thousands of drunk concert attendees, etc….a MMUOMF could have much appeal to those of us who are either older and not as pliant in our ability to attend live concerts over the weekend and/or those of us that are sequestered to our cubes/offices/home theaters and can only spend a few hours (vs a weekend) enjoying a music festival. My friend loved seeing Prince, Jack Johnson, Portishead, and Death Cab for Cutie, but seemingly would not attend again due to the externalities and associated soft costs of traveling to Indio, CA!
Its not hard to see how this evolves…with wide-screens set up next to the music acts (in real time) with people blogging/twittering/texting their comments from the virtual world (and/or at home) and the content and story being parlayed into the real world for concert attendees to read if they chose while they snap mobile shots from their phones and then back to the web (facebook, or other).
The real world music is pipped into the virtual world, and those in the real world (not real time), can sit at home and watch and listen to their favorite virtual world music festival on their surround sound 5.1 system. Confused? Or excited? Or both. Fascinating to watch this develop and deploy.
For those that are “uninitiated”, there may now actually be a reason to visit Second Life or its equivalent!
