Archive for the ‘Research’ Category

Welcome to Mobile Developer TV!

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Hello and welcome to Mobile Developer TV.

My name is Ewan and I’m founder and Editor.  You can find out more about me here.

After Mobile Industry Review turned subscription-only back at the end of March, I’ve been looking around for other projects to commence.  Mobile Developer TV started off as a concept in the back of my mind about 6 months ago.

Here’s the Background

I’m founder and editor of Mobile Industry Review (”MIR”), one of the world’s most influential commentators on the mobile industry.  The site published daily news and opinion for almost 3 years, reaching a core audience of 250,000 industry executives and fanatics.  MIR’s feed is integrated directly into the intranets of many mobile operators, handset manufacturers and mobile service companies.  Super reach, super influence.  Witness, for example, our ground-breaking video of the never-before-seen Nokia Test Labs in Farnborough (Over 175,000 people viewed it within days of publishing). Or take a look at the recent post I published about iPhone centric developer mindset in Silicon Valley, picked up by MocoNews, VentureBeat and the Washington Post.

I thoroughly enjoyed producing the site with a team of brilliant contributors.  In March 2009, I turned MIR subscription-only, providing the site’s on-going feed to one company.  The nature of the company’s requirement developed to the point that I was able to engage a small team of writers to deliver the on-going service.  I still retain all MIR rights and content — including the domain names and the site’s extensive reach — so I’ve been looking for another project to put these resources to good use.

Why Mobile Developer TV?

I really, really enjoy producing online video features. There’s something about ‘TV’ that you just can’t match with the written word.  It’s about seeing the person (or people), visualising their excitement and seeing just how passionate they are about their products and services. I did a lot of experimenting with the Mobile Industry Review Show — the MIR Show — and after a good few hundred hours of stress and learning, I think I’ve more or less perfected the art of brilliant online video production: Top quality HD cameras, excellent HD video hosting, super-expensive microphones — in fact, the best equipment you can buy, a bit of creativity in the editing studio (Final Cut is excellent, but iMovie, although frowned upon from the professional sector, is extremely quick).

Marry this passion for online television with my fascination with the mobile industry — and more specifically, with mobile development — and it didn’t take me long to hatch the concept.  And here it is!

The Aim

I’m going to meet the best and the brightest in mobile development — and I’m going to put them on camera.  I’m aiming to publish one TV show per week to start with.  Each show will centre on one or two people in the mobile development space.  iPhone App developers, certainly.  But I’m interested in the whole spectrum — from Blackberry’s App World, to Nokia’s Ovi, to Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace and beyond.

If you’ve ever seen any of the interviews I’ve produced in the past, you’ll know I like to keep myself out of the picture. It’s not about me, it’s about the interviewee.  In some cases I’m aiming to do a straight interview — me to the right of the camera pointing the microphone and asking questions.  In other cases, I’ll do a walk-about or a show-and-tell with the developer.

I’m interested in talking to and profiling:

  • Mobile application developers
    (Platform agnostic: iPhone/Blackberry/Nokia/J2ME/Samsung/Microsoft/Android)
  • Companies whose primary business is NOT in the mobile space — but who have developed or are developing mobile applications.
    (For instance: A travel company launching an iPhone app, dotcoms launching their own apps — eg. Lastminute’s FoneFood app)
  • Companies who supply services to/work with mobile developers
    (Example: Providers of mobile advertising, debug/testing)

Video will comprise most of the content here on Mobile Developer TV — however in my research over the past months, it’s clear that, whilst there are a lot of developers in Silicon Valley and London (my two primary locations), there’s a considerable geographic spread of developers.  Only today I was talking to developers from Ohio, Johannesburg, New Zealand, Ukraine, Paris and Scotland.  I’d like to be able to fly into meet each — that might be a bit of a challenge in the short term though.  So to supplement, I’ll aim to publish text interviews and profiles regularly.

One developer I spoke to suggested recording his own interview on video, answering my questions to camera with his own facilities — and sending it over to me to publish.  I think it’s a super suggestion and I think we’ll do that.

Can I profile you?  Contact Me!

I’m based in London and San Francisco so I’ll be producing the majority of in-person videos from those locations.  If you’d like to feature, drop me a note.  I’m ewan@mobiledeveloper.tv — this is the best way of contacting me.  But you can also phone/text me.  My mobile numbers are:

+44 7769 658104 (UK)

+1 415 200 9515 (US)

… (I’m happy to hear from PRs too.)

Don’t Be British

Please don’t be British — that is, sit at the back and hope I’ll come across you.  I really will do my best to find mobile developers and companies to profile — I’ve already got a big list from working with MIR — but I am most certainly no genius.  So I need your help in order to profile you — I need to know you exist. So please do drop me a note if you’re keen to be profiled.  At the very least I’ll aim to send you out a list of questions to answer by email that I can turn into a profile piece here on the site. (Who are you, what are you creating/have you created, what platform, why, what challenges have you had, and so on).  Ideally I’ll arrange to meet physically to interview you on-camera and perhaps produce an application walk-through.

Got News?

If you’ve got a particular topic of announcement that you think mobile developers and those working in related fields should know about, knock me over an email right-away.

Design

I’m doing a Robert Scoble at the moment — that is publishing with a default Wordpress Theme.  I’ll update it as we progress.  The content is way more important than the theme and that’s where my focus is at the moment.

Editorial Policy

As for editorial policy, I’m aiming for a macro view of mobile development.  I don’t plan on publishing code level discussions, or discussing the finer points of the Symbian operating system.  Instead, I’ll be looking at the commercial aspects of the mobile applications development sector along with the trends I’m witnessing.  The overriding focus is, of course, on profiling developers.  I’m particularly interested in talking with one-man-bands:  The chaps (and ladies) who’re single-handedly driving the massive change sweeping the industry.  That said, I’m also keen to talk to the business people — the product managers, the executive teams — about the challenges and successes in the field of mobile applications development.

This is a work in progress so I’d welcome your feedback, either below or by email.

I’ll be syndicating the output through the public feed on Mobile Industry Review so if you’re already a MIR RSS subscriber, you’ll start to get updates shortly.  You can also catch blog updates via the new Mobile Developer TV Twitter account @mobdevtv.

Standby!

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Originally published on Mobile Developer TV and automatically republished here on Mobile Industry Review. View the original post.

LG Mobile wants YOUR opinion

Friday, November 14th, 2008

Thanks to a tweet that piqued my interest the other day, I can tell you that LG Mobile is doing research and they’d like your opinion, particularly in the run up to the festive period that is fast approaching.

They’d like to know what is important to you.

And I think that’s a good thing because LG’s handsets are simply brilliant…

But you can do NOTHING with them. Nothing other than what the technical chaps in Korea decide you want. So you can have a calendar. And a whizzy camera. And even an email client.

But if you’d like to be able to use Twitter on your LG? No. Use the browser. If you’d like to have a Facebook client? No. Use the browser. If you’d like to try out Last.fm and stream music to your handset. NO. If you’d like to automatically upload images to other services not defined by LG? NO. If you’d like to send your videos to Vimeo rather than Youtube? NO. You’re out of luck.

This is the serious problem with LG. Gorgeous handsets. Completely vacuous when it comes to their expandable application abilities. The age when a mobile manufacturer decides exactly what your handset can do — application wise — is OVER. At least, it should be. Unless you’re in the market for a £5 mobile.

LG haven’t got that message yet.

There are rumours that they might launch a developer channel, a mobile marketplace a la iTunes App Store. They’re still rumours.

We live in hope. Any attempt at ‘out-reach’ is good news.

Anyway if you’d like to help LG out, they’ve got a survey waiting for you right here. I just took it and completed it in about 60 seconds. Interestingly, the questions aren’t necessarily about your camera megapixel demands…

Take the survey!

3 business is excellent value; but that’s no excuse for working at the Doctors

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

I just got this bit of news in from UK operator, 3. They’ve got one of the best priced business services in the marketplace (have a look here). Independent analyst, Pure Pricing, has verified this.

They’ve done a bit of research to find out just how mobile mad we are. Have a read…

New survey by 3 Business discovers hard-working British staff unwilling to leave the office behind
Nearly a quarter use their mobile to work from the pub, 25% have sent emails and made work calls whilst on public transport and 13% even work from the doctors.

A survey of over 1,000 UK workers released today by 3 Business has uncovered that 31% of all people feel it is essential to be contactable by work, whenever and wherever they are. The survey also found that 23% of people have answered calls or sent emails whilst down the pub, 25% have worked on public transport and 13% have even sent emails and made work calls from the doctor’s surgery.
The survey also revealed that 7% of all people questioned, which equates to 4m people across the UK, have taken time out in the middle of a date to take a work phone call. An intriguing 4% of people have even managed to send emails and speak to work colleagues whilst having a waxing or tanning session.
Renato Bottini, Head of 3 Business, said, “The mobile phone has become such a crucial part of the working day that people can now no longer do without it. Whereas previously people would be lashed to their desk, their mobile now gives them the freedom to keep up with emails and other work events no matter where they are.

When I’ve got my Blackberry on me, I use my ‘downtime’ a lot. So I have definitely worked from the doctors. The pub. The restaurant. The plane (when on the runway with a signal).

I’m not too sure I want you emailing me whilst you’re being waxed.

Maybe we could get RIM to knock up some dynamic footers.

Sent from my Blackberry whilst I was on the loo.

Sent from my Blackberry whilst I was talking to the Doctor about that rash.

Sent from my Blackberry whilst I really should have been paying attention to the road.

BBC’s computer generated map of British telephone calls

Monday, August 4th, 2008

The BBC have been promoting a show called “Britain from Above” in which which they take telemetry from various trackable sources and generate fancy maps of our activities and, presumably, add a thick layer of social commentary.

In the promo video linked below they show a few examples of air, land and sea movements but it’s the content at almost exactly 1 minute into the video that interests me; A traffic map of every telephone exchange in Britain tracked, as they say in the video, second by second.

This is obviously based on information from BT, so are there any mobile networks that do fancy network utilisation displays like this? Hopefully there will be more telecom eye candy in the full show.

You can check out the promo video here or, if you’re in the UK, see the whole show on Sunday 10th August at 9pm on BBC One.

AdMob’s iPhone traffic static; Sony gobbles up UK

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

Vijay, on behalf of mobile ad networking geniuses, AdMob, whacked me over these summary points from their February metrics report. The AdMob metrics reports are most definitely becoming essential reading for anyone wanting to track real mobile usage. It’s all very well reading those annual and semi annual research reports, but I want to know what’s going on now-ish.

So here are Vijay’s summary points:

1. iPhone traffic was flat in February. This may be due to the ‘novelty’ factor of people getting iPhones as holiday gifts around December/January, the spirit apparently didn’t grow in February.

Hmm. I wonder if that’s accurate? It does make some sense. If you bought an iPhone around Christmas, one would imagine that you’re continuing to use it as normal. Ergo ‘flat’ stats.

2. Blackberry and Nokia have been fighting out in the Smartphone world as top handset makers to access mobile ads via AdMob. Their rank on the network varies from country to country (see below). Even SonyEriccson wins the battle in specific markets like the UK. This means that basically the Smartphone race is being won differently region by region.

Good news for Sony Ericsson — their handsets accounted for 37% of all ad requests.

3. AdMob continues to add new data points for analysis since launching the metrics consistently since last November. There are more things to compare across regions, handsets and behavior, potentially leading to something new from a product side coming soon…

The moment I saw the first AdMob metrics report last year, I thought they should product-ise it. I look forward to seeing what the offer. AdMob is by no means definitive — you obviously have to be accessing mobile sites containing AdMob spots in order to be tracked, and not all sites feature this, but it’s a good ready reckoner.

You can get the AdMob report free — for the moment, anyway — here: http://www.admob.com/s/solutions/metrics.

Secure mobile working survey; update

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

Do you remember this survey I wrote about recently?

Got a note through from Beky Hughes regarding a secure mobile working survey. She’s hunting for UK IT journalists to complete this survey — so if you qualify.. or if you maintain a blog, I reckon qualify, go ahead and check it out. I thought it might be relevant for the SMS Text News audience because I’m willing to bet that almost that every reader has used his or her laptop in a public location and when commuting.

Well, there was a bit of an error with the survey software so they weren’t able to get the contact details of some of the respondents. Which means it will be quite difficult to enter you to win an M&S hamper if they don’t know who you are.

So if you took the survey and didn’t see an option to enter your contact details on it, email Beky (bekyh at neesham.co.uk) with your email and postal address just in case. You never know, you might work.

The survey link is here.

Secure mobile working survey; M&S hamper up for grabs

Monday, March 17th, 2008

Got a note through from Beky Hughes regarding a secure mobile working survey. She’s hunting for UK IT journalists to complete this survey — so if you qualify.. or if you maintain a blog, I reckon qualify, go ahead and check it out. I thought it might be relevant for the SMS Text News audience because I’m willing to bet that almost that every reader has used his or her laptop in a public location and when commuting. Indeed, I’m writing this from a public wifi connection at the Radisson in Marylebone. But I’m using an Apple so I am exhibiting that super-confident you-can’t-hack-this glow.

Meanwhile some scriptkiddie across the road is probably browsing through my files and watching me type this text in real time…

This survey aims to raise awareness of the security risks associated with working on laptops in public places through the personal experiences of commuting IT journalists in the UK.

Please take time to complete the survey. There are 10 questions in total and answers you provide will remain anonymous. We especially encourage you to share your personal experiences of using laptops while commuting, which again will remain nameless.

The closing date for completed surveys is 5.30pm on Monday 31st March 2008. Fully completed survey respondents with the best anecdote will be entered into a prize draw for a Marks & Spencer hamper to the value of £50. In addition, every completed survey respondent will be rewarded with a free Vikuiti Privacy Filter from 3M (worth £20-£50).

How to take part:

• Access the survey by clicking on the link below or copying and pasting into your browser’s address bar:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Ohge7spLjAp3ld2dVusbdA_3d_3d

• Please answer all 10 questions adding additional comment where applicable

• Click on Done >> when you have completed the survey

A call from The FTC and thank-the-mobile-God for Vodafone

Friday, March 14th, 2008

Got a call from the FTC today.

Michael Becker of iLoop reckoned I should sit in as a panelist on an upcoming Town Hall meeting that the FTC are putting together on the subject of mobile commerce (and with an emphasis on consumer protection).

The Town Hall will explore consumer protection issues arising in the rapidly expanding world of M-commerce. Topics will include:

* The use of mobile-messaging services as instruments of M-commerce;
* Consumers’ ability to control mobile applications;
* The adaptation of advertising to mobile devices, including the challenges presented by small screen disclosures;
* M-commerce practices targeting children and teens;
* Industry best practices in preventing fraud, disclosing costs, and resolving billing disputes;
* Evolving security threats and solutions; and
* Next-generation products and services.

James Trilling, one of the Attorneys supervising the formulation of the meeting, arranged to call me with colleague Ruth, who identified herself as a regular reader. Nice one Ruth!

I’ve got quite a lot of opinions on mobile commerce. In fact I’m overflowing with them, particularly real experiences since I’ve been out using a lot of American mobile commerce services recently. James tentatively asked my perspective on mobile commerce and consumer protection and within moments I was venting forth on PhonepayPlus’s Fine Day, the STOP command and how I was really impressed at being able to buy a ham sandwich via text with Noah’s Gomobo.com service.

I’m not sure if I’ll qualify for the panel, particularly given my realistic experience and direct approach. I can just imagine how some industry players — the Motorola-RAZR-bearing 55 year old tanned mobile industry executives who’ve only just got to grips with this new ‘texting’ lark — might not be that impressed at my highly reality-based perspective on the industry.

It will be interesting to read the results of the panel.

If you’d like to send some viewpoints for consideration the FTC site notes that…

Interested parties may submit written comments or original research until March 17, 2008.

You’ve got a good couple of days to knock something up and send it over. If you’re working in or around the American mobile industry and you’d like to have a say, I recommend you do so. More details on this page.

To Vodafone. I can’t tell you how delighted I was to receive James’ call. Because I’d have been panicking big time if I was using my T-Mobile handset. On an international call you want the clearest line possible. And since I was actually standing in Liverpool Street Station when James called, there was a lot of external noise. And James and Ruth were on a conference phone. It was just brilliant having what felt like a ‘full signal’ to be able to talk to them without worrying about:

a) the call dropping (on my end)
b) poor general audio quality
c) unpredictable scrambling of the audio

Such a relief. Delighted with my Vodafone connection.


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