Archive for January, 2007
You’ve noticed that the update frequency of the blog have slowdown by the past two weeks. I am literally overloaded with many things, and too few times to catch up with the blog for now.
But there are some interesting news:
The first one, is that I am leaving In-Fusio/Mobilescope. The In-Fusio times were great for me and we have created some extraordinary things, but after many years as CTO of In-Fusio, then MobileScope it’s time for me to move on and explore new areas….
if you follow this blog, you probably now my two hot topics: Mobile Widgets, and Geolocalisation.
I will move to Mobease with a CTO role. It’s quite certain that 2007 will be good for mobile widgets, so it will be a perfect year for the Mobease product launch: mobidgets . We did not communicate a lot, but there are great things hapenning behind the scene.
For the Geolocalisation topic, there are some on-going movements around J2memap that will be disclosed in the near future.
I will be also at the 3Gsm, in Barcelona, so let’s meet there if you think that we have some common topics! (and even if not!)
I also have a few post about some interesting project that we were working on at MobileScope that I’ll publish before the end of the week.
Technorati Tags: mobease, mobidgets
January 31st, 2007
Photo by Rick Takagi 
Some rights reserved.
Here is carnival number #58 with a huge section on the big topic of the week, which is of course the iPhone announcement from Apple. Here are the posts discussing it:
- Let’s start with the Impact of the Apple iPhone : A good summary of iPhone capacities, issues and a lot of interesting remarks from Michale Mace. Even if it might not be the ultimate phone, that’s true that every new device will be evaluated against iPhone’s specs….And make sure to read the paragraph about Microsoft comments on the iPhone, the day before the presentation!
- David from PikeSoft comes with a big question:What the iPhone means for mobile computing . David also mentions the secret project from Palm, which could eventually be in the same space than the iPhone! Palm was a very innovative company in the early days, so may be it’s time for them to recreate something ahead of the iPhone?
- Bill Day thinks that WiFi is more important than HSPDA for early iPhone success, especially in the US. But in Europe, a data centric phone without 3G will probably not be as sexy as expected.
- Ajit opens a different perspective on the iPhone impact on the industry. In his post, The iPhone is extraordinary not because of it’s UI but because it’s the tail wagging the dog ... he explores the impact on this new device for operators, and first, for Cingular.
- Greg Clayman talk of the The Great iPhone Debate
- Chris Johnosn ask :iPhone! Should you buy it? , especially considering his recent acquisition of a Motorola Q and the iPhone price tag .
- Last entry about the iPhone, question the usage price of applications: Five Thousand Dollars per Megabyte seems to be the price of using iChat on the iPhone! you probably understand better why third parties applications are blocked now!
- And a small mention to my post about inevitable evolution of iPhone competitors: the show is over, so when iPhone clones will comes?
But there is a life outside the iPhone:
- Communities Dominate Brands have a fascinating article about mobile phone numbers, in perspective of others “big” numbers (TV, Cars, Internet, etc…) Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users. And this is my pick as a post of the week.
- Troy Norcross from Mobile and Marketing Spam explains us that Content Owners should avoid mobile network operators. , especially in the future where operators walled garden may not be relevant anymore.
- CEO pointed out Mobile Payments - one of the most important annoucements in CES 2007. The announce that Visa and Nokia will turn cell phones into credit cards might be huge for the industry, if well executed!
- Daniel Taylor dig into the The Enterprise MVNO Challenge,
- Jason Delport did a review of Financial Times Java ME News Reader
- We have also a useful test of JumpTap, one of the player in mobile search: JumpTap - Pure Mobile Search
- We have also a very informative post about How To Update Your Nokia Phone Software. I do not have an E50, so I can not tell you how accurate this post is!
- Not fully linked to mobile phone, but to mobile devices (cars!) : Ford and Microsoft ‘SyncUp’ to provide Auto Software. 2007 is expected to be the year where auto computing will take off, and this is a first proof of it…
- Last entry was about:Fusion to Showcase VoIP Might
That’s all for this week, plenty of usefull reading while some of you are waiting for your next iPhone!
Next week host is Xellular Identity…
Technorati Tags: carnival, mobilists, 58, carnival58, mobile
January 15th, 2007
“I used to say that the web browser was the most hostile programming environment ever devised, but that was before I found out about Mobile.”
Douglas CrockFord…
What about mobile web development? 
January 12th, 2007
Now that excitement of the discovery is gone, I take some time to have a deeper analysis of the announce. Beyond of what seems to be one of the best UI, there are many issue that are still open:
- WiFi, but no 3G. Both are complementary, and it’s so hard today to find a WiFi hotspot than 3G remains frequently the best alternative. Anyway, it might be the reason why the phone is only expected Q4′07 in Europe.
- Not extensible by third parties (only Apple or Cingular probably)! So, why putting Mac OS-X if you can not add any application? Seems that we are back to the closed garden!
- No iTune sync OTA or through WiFi? Is it a phone or not??? Not sure that operators will be happy with this, or may be it’s an attempt to sell more Mac?
Another question, is it a “real” Mac Os-X, or a “Mac Os-X mobile“. Apple claims that it’s real, but remembers that there are versions of it without any hard drive. Can you put a full Mac OS X on a device without hard drive? It will be probably in the 512 Meg to 1 Gig range, without any ability to easily be expanded. I am not sure, but I guess that it’s the equivalent of Windows Mobile for Windows….
The other strange statement is the “support for Cingular“? Does this mean that it won’t be supported for other operators? Do I have to wait for Apple to get an agreement with all operators to get such phone?
Other annoying things, but that are less important:
- No expandable memory (does this mean no memory card?)
- No removable battery (still incredible)
- No exchange or office support (I do not care of this, but it just gives some clues about the fact that it might be a closed approach)
Now, what is sure, is that Apple pushed the expectation to the next level, but I am not sure than they will get all the benefit of it. I guess it will be much easiest now for a third party to “copy” some of these features (or to be inspired by it). On the MP3 market, it’s already the case: Apple is not any more a real innovator, and many third parties players are much easiest to use, and cheaper than Apple one. Apple seems to have a lot of patent here, but will it be enough to block their competitors? Having a closed garden approach might prevent huge platform adoption….
Look at the iPod games: as far as I know, no extra games has been
deployed since the initial announce…. Too complex? Too closed? Too
costly?
Of course, the first “iPhone” clones will be disappointing. The will look the same, but won’t have the same usability. Biggest player will make efforts, and will try to differentiate. They make money from hardware, not services, so they do not have any interest to “close” their phones. In fact, I think that this will open doors for software provider to team with manufacturers to quickly provide some features of this level.
But I still think that it’s a great device (I want one!), that contains a lot of really cool innovation. I am just questionning the Apple strategic choices….
A few interesting links:
http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/gartenberg/archives/2007/01/whats_missing_f.html
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/the-iphone-is-not-a-smartphone/
Apple Missed Opportunity
Technorati Tags: iPhone, Wireless, Apple
January 10th, 2007
Honestly, I was doubtfull about the capacity of Apple to really re-invent the phone, and I must admit I was wrong. If the iPhone really fulfill his promise, it will be a killer phone…. Much better than all the iPods, a sooo good looking UI, and some incredibly good features! Really hard not to be excited by this one. Thousands miles aways of a boring Windows Mobile, or a bad looking Symbian phone…Just one word: congratulation!
The widget part seems to be quite good too…
Definitively pushing the barrier to the next level…. My first Mac might be a phone!
Much more pictures and informations at Engadget….
Technorati Tags: iPhone, apple, mobilewidgets
January 9th, 2007
Well, seems that I’ve also been tagged for “5 things you don’t know about me”, but twice! The objective of the game is to give five “unknown” facts about you, and spread this virally to five other people…
So this came from Seb and Wendong!
- I started to work as a game developer for UbiSoft during my student period. Ported a crap game, and had to get a serious job in the telecommunications later on.
- I was in Africa (Zaïre that came later Republic Democratic of Congo) and enjoyed some civil war
- I’ve made a lot of pirate TV decoders during my engineering school! (for
Canal+)
- I am now a definitive Ruby On Rails addict! The best productivity boost since I’ve discovered Java, 11 years ago.
- I own a collection of “museum computers and console”, like Vectrex, ZX81, Colecovision, Atari Lynx, Gizmodo, etc….
So, let’s follow the link with a few suggestions for the next providers of these five facts:
- Pascal Darre
- tmenguy (everything and the software universe)
- Philiipe Kerignard (truc de ouf in French)
- Fred Brunel
- Alexander Cassovici ( Mobitrends)
Technorati Tags: 5 thins you don’t know about me, 5things
January 9th, 2007
The new Yahoo! Go 2.0 is out, but it seems already impossible to download it, as the beta is closed due to too high number of downloads. The result seems quite impressive, and now it works also on J2me. So as predicted (yes, this is in my 2007 predictions, but they are not yet published!), Yahoo is following Google (and soon Microsoft) in providing high quality frontend in J2me to their services…
Technorati Tags: yahoogo, mobile, yahoo, j2me
January 9th, 2007
