Now and again I’ve found myself on some obscure blog post from 2005 only to discover a genius application for uploading screenshots or something like that.

Indeed I think that’s how I came across ImageWell (uploads screenshots via FTP) and Mailplane (run Gmail / Apps as a proper application) and more.

I didn’t sign-up initially because, well… so much of my desktop usage is browser based. Looking at the applications I have open at the moment, it doesn’t really make for shocking or surprising reading:

* Safari
* Firefox
* Microsoft Word
* Skype
* Mailplane
* Spotify
* ImageWell
* MarsEdit
* Terminal
* Adium
* TweetDeck

Hardly earth shattering, eh? But then… you never know. So I signed up this afternoon and I’ve added two chaps already, Geetarchurchy and Ricky Chotai. Aside from the basic ‘what’s he using that for’ thoughts, it’s really quite interesting. I can see how this will/would really help with discovery of new applications.

Which brings me to the subject of this post. I’d really like to see something like this for mobile handsets. I’m sure the Wakoopa creators are considering something like this. Of course it wouldn’t work very well on an iPhone in real time (no background apps on an iPhone… yet) but it would work reasonably well on Android and Symbian.

Nokia’s already doing this with the upcoming Ovi Store (just WHEN is it actually, actually launching?). Peer-to-peer recommendations. I should, theoretically, be able to see what my Ovi friends are buying/using/consuming via the Ovi Store. I’m looking forward to seeing how people react to that feature, I think it’ll be a winner.

I certainly find the iPhone application discovery process a little bit haphazard at the moment — indeed, it’s positively lonely when you’re sat looking at the App Store on your iPhone. I tend to hear more about applications when I’m not actively browsing, when I’m out-and-about or when I’m working. That’s fine, but it’s not necessarily when I’m most receptive to looking at new things.

I can imagine opening up the App Store on my Nokia with the intent of finding out what my friends have checked out recently.

I’m hoping that once all the kinks are worked out, the Ovi Store will reinvigorate the desire to install new apps… We shall see.

We’re putting on an event this month in Paris, France. I’ll have more details soon — but I can say that the event will be in the last week of this month and it’s set to feature some of the hottest mobile developers in France.

Much like the previous Developer event we held back in January (at Mobile Industry Review), we’ll be interviewing every single attendee, doing some show-and-tells demonstrating their applications and publishing those in a special edition of Mobile Developer TV.

France has always had a pretty decent mobile development industry — but it’s been severely hamstrung by the day-to-day realities of the European market (e.g. working with the likes of Symbian, trying to generate revenue via premium rate text). The iPhone changed all of that, though. At Mobile Monday Paris in March, I saw a community of 300+ developers electrified by the opportunities offered by the end-to-end iTunes platform.

It’s most certainly not all about iPhone, especially in such a Nokia-centric country and continent, but iPhone is, of course, garnering the lion’s share of attention and support from newly revitalised investors.

So I’m looking forward to visiting Paris. I’ll have more details up soon, we’re just confirming the date and venue.

Meantime if you’d like to come along to the event, just drop me a note (ewan@mobiledeveloper.tv) and I’ll keep you updated.

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Mobile Monday Silicon Valley was fantastic this evening. There was a huge turnout on an uncharacteristically rainy San Francisco evening for the Location-Aware app demo evening.

Skyhook Wireless kindly underwrote the bar and gave a pitch at the beginning of the series of presentations, outlining their rather excellent range of location services available to mobile developers. I managed to catch Skyhook’s Director of Marketing, Kate Imbach, on camera discussing the merits of their offering. Suffice to say if you’re a developer and you’d like to integrate location based services (e.g. Find Me) into your app, definitely, definitely talk to Skyhook.

Here are the companies who presented:

• Crazymenu.com – Launched their iPhone (lunchtime) online restaurant discovery and ordering facility. I really liked their concept. I’m going to look for it in the iPhone app store.
• Cristdrive – Their application, Voilà, will simply and elegantly tell any of your online services where you are, right now. $0.99 in the app store.
• Retronyms – Couldn’t make it for some reason so Kate from Skyhook did her best with their presentation. They’ve got a rather interesting GPS game by the name of Seek ‘n Spell going live. Check their site.
• Wertago – Showed off their app offering city nightlife in the palm of your hand. Nice!
• Geoterrestrial – GPSToday, a comprehensive Windows Mobile application offering an array of GPS related services. If you’re into location services, definitely check out what they’ve created — amongst other features, it’ll sit in the background and continually tell folk where you are.
• HearPlanet – Dale Larson’s audio city guides deliver location information that really speaks to you. You can, as the site puts it, ‘leave those bulky tour books behind and let HearPlanet (iPhone) show you the way. Get it on the App Store. It’s the #2 rated Travel app at the moment and they’ve had almost 500k downloads so far.
• Life360 – Trades on fear. But in a good way. Their mobile (and desktop) services deliver you instant safety, security and peace of mind. I’m going to get this for my wife and I. Google Latitude helps show where we both are.. but I want more than that. I particularly like their ‘find your family in an emergency’ facilities.
• Carrrmatey by Lionebra –> Brought the house down. So much so that I filmed their pitch. I think the audience were really taken with the pirate theme. It’s a really smart utility that records where you left your car, reminds you to return at appointed times (for meters) and guides you back to your car — rather useful if you keep on forgetting where you parked.

I managed to get some good video interviews tonight — I was going to hold them back until we’ve launched with the nice new look and feel, but it’s al about content, right? I’m going to aim to get the first lot of videos up tomorrow morning.

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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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Latitude, if you’re not familiar with it, is an add-on to Google Maps that (amongst other features) overlays an avatar of your friends on Google Maps. So if you’re out-and-about you can see their location. Or if you’re on your desktop you can see a large Google Map of your friends.

Typically innovative, Google decided to take things to the next level. Wouldn’t it be neat that, if you had sufficient friends each with a T-Mobile G1 (for example), you could position them on the map to spell out a message.

Granted, you’d need to have quite a bit of spare time. But it’s doable, right?

Right.

The Google Latitude team stuck their money where their mouth is and had a bit of fun, thus:

That there is a screenshot of a Google Maps screen spelling out ‘Hi Mom’ across central San Francisco. Each little square you see is an avatar representing a physical Google team member with a phone standing in the corresponding physical location in San Francisco.

The enterprising chaps also made a video documenting the process of setting this up:

There is, I suspect, limited value in spelling out messages using your friends on Google Maps / Latitude. But it’s a super proof-of-concept for the technology.

And a reminder to get on Latitude.

Latitude, of course, isn’t yet available for the iPhone so that’s most of San Francisco ruled out. But for everyone back in Europe sporting your common-or-garden N-Series Nokia device, perhaps it’s time you and your friends spent this Saturday spelling out ‘Hello Your Majesty’ across a map of London.

(You’ll need about 10-12 friends per character.)

Of course AdMob are also hugely active in the application monetisation space with well over 1,000 iPhone applications carrying AdMob inventory. What’s good to know is that in many cases, AdMob is writing cheques (or ‘checks’) in excess of $10k+ to a lot of developers. (Indeed, some of the more popular apps are knocking back hundreds of thousands in AdMob revenue.)

So this evening’s event was both an introduction to AdMob’s iPhone related services, a panel discussion on the hot topic du jour (iPhone App Discoverability) as well as the opportunity for developers to network with each other.

The panel featured the following luminaries:

Mike Kerns, CEO, Citizen Sports (Sportacular)
Jonathan Zweig, CEO, Jirbo / Epic Tilt (ESPN Cameraman, many others)
Ben Lewis, Founder, TapJoy
Alan Wells, Zynga

Here’s a pic:

The always reliable and informed Richard Wong (far right in the blue shirt), General Partner of Accel Partners was moderator. If, by the way, you’ve come up with a genius mobile service, you should be talking with Richard. Right now. They’re hunting.

My evening began on the boulevards of San Mateo — a rather picturesque series of boutique shops and pizza restaurants (I think I walked by about 10 pizza outlets on the walk from the station). I used the always reliable Google Maps on my N95 8GB to navigate the 10 minute walk from station to venue. (In a show of solidarity I thought I should bring my UK iPhone to the event — but in an uncharacteristic effort to avoid being nailed for £7/meg in data from o2 UK, I’ve had it set to Airplane mode, so I’ve been using my TMO USA sim in my N95.)

I arrived about 15 minutes early so the Benjamin Franklin Hotel wasn’t quite ready. I spotted a chap standing outside with his iPhone and I theorised he might well be one of the 150 developers attending the event. I struck up a conversation. Turns out that the chap — Steffen Frost has been working with iPhone app development since May 2007. He came up with the concept 1st of May 2007 and had $100k+ seed funding within two weeks. Nice. His product? Carticipate. They’ve basically fixed car-trip-sharing by iPhone.

Here’s a pic I snapped of Steffen:

“Show me!” I said as he described the concept. Within seconds he was showing the functions. You can browse the trips already being made in your area and ask to ride-share. Or if you’re heading somewhere yourself, you can advertise your trip and see if anyone else wants to join you. Smart. They’ve had some substantial interest from a lot of big companies wanting to sanitise their employee commuting traffic (amongst other applications).

“What’s your next platform?” I asked Steffen, “After iPhone?”

“Android,” he replied. “How about Nokia?” I asked.

“Yeah, well…”

Suffice to say he was severely unimpressed by the current Nokia offering.

That wasn’t a unique viewpoint. I’ll come to that later.

The venue opened a few minutes later so Steffen and I popped in. Jeff from 148apps, (the iPhone review site) had written his Twitter ID on his label — so I promptly copied and began marching around the room thrusting my hand out and asking questions left, right and centre.

Goodness me it’s iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. Obviously this was an iPhone developer meetup — but I was fascinated to see how insular, how wholly-iPhone the development community is here in Silicon Valley.

“What’s your next platform?” I asked another developer.

“Er… probably Android,” he replied, after a bit of thought.

“Right… and, after that?” I prompted.

“Well,…” he replied, the conversation trailing off to the point that we both stood there in silence for a few seconds.

I remembered myself and spluttered out “Blackberry?”

“Well…” he replied again. A nice way of saying no.

Ok.

“What about Ovi?” I asked. Hopeful. I was expecting either a venomous “GET OUT” or a knowing nod.

“Ovi? What’s that?” he looked at me confused.

“Er, the Nokia offering — their app store?”

He and his two colleagues who’d now joined us looked horrified. As though I’d taken their iPhone and nailed it to the wall.

“Nohhhkeeaaaa?” They asked. I’m sure their minds were drifting to the $29.99 bollocks-handsets they see on display in the mobile operator stores. The rubbish ones — the glorified mobile telephones complete with alarm clocks. (Think the Nokia 2100 series).

“Er LIKE NO,” said the chap’s colleague, as the other two nodded vigorously.

Interesting!

I thought I’d try out a killer stat on them.

“So 17m iPhones on the planet — Nokia reckons they’ll have the Ovi Store on 400m handsets by the end of 2010.” (I was paraphrasing — this is more or less accurate.)

Blank looks.

Nobody cares.

It’s a fascinating experience walking amongst these developers. They’re the cream of the cream. They’re the Stanford drop-outs (or not – “I did my first and second degrees at Stanford” said one chap”). They’re conditioned by the Silicon Valley mentality to think big, BIG BIG. This is where the innovation is. It’s easy to see why the Valley is the centre of everything.

At least it’s the centre of iPhone development.

There’s only so much you can do when you’re sat in a dark office in London waiting for the ‘your app has been accepted’ email from Apple. Compare that to one panelist’s throwaway comment, “We’re really tight with the Apple guys.”

And tight is good. Tight is the way ahead. Almost every chap I met has a friend-of-a-friend who works at Apple. Or knows a ‘guy’ at Google. Or whose dorm mate knocked out a $10k/day Chess app for the iPhone.

As I walked around the venue, I bumped into Omar, AdMob’s founder. I’m still ridiculously embarrassed — I haven’t got over sitting next to Omar in a dinner in San Francisco last September and asking him ‘what he did at AdMob’ only to find out he was the founder. OH THAT OMAR!

I found Omar in good spirits. He was on his way up to commence proceedings. It says a lot when the CEO and founder of AdMob took the time to pop along and introduce the event. He outlined his company’s commitment to mobile developers and platforms such as the iPhone before swiftly handing over to colleague Mike for a quick AdMob FAQ, namely:

Q: Can I monetise my app with AdMob?
A: Yes. Lots of people are already (1,000+ apps using AdMob).

Q: How much money can I make?
A: It’s very dependent on the application and it’s use case, but, for the sake of argument, assume $0.15 net revenue per customer.

The audience sat in silence, gobbling up the information as Mike delivered it. It was very smart to give some basic revenue examples. Some apps are clearly making a heck of a lot more than $0.15 per customer, but if you’re looking for a ready reckoner of what you might be able to achieve, having this information is really valuable.

Next? The panel. It would be fair to represent the panel as iPhone Developer Rockstars. They’re operating in the mythical space of more or less continual Top-50 App Store billing. As I sat taking in the panel debate I was mentally calculating just how many application downloads the four guys accounted for. If you’re looking for confirmation of rockstar status, witness this panelist quote:

“We worked out the other day that one of our applications has been played by our users for 2,000 man years so far,”

Shit.

Moderator Richard Wong did a super job of asking a series of pertinent questions to the panel around the issue of application discovery. Once you’ve got your app accepted, do you blow a load of money (on, for example, AdMob) to get your app discovered on the launch day? Or do you play a longer game? Can you really monetise with ads? (Yes).

One point I really liked was, I think, made by Ben Lewis of TapJoy. He explained that customers had emailed in saying they were finding it difficult getting above level 30 in one of their games. So they responded by making levels 30-40 easier. In doing so, they found that their ad-impressions flew off the charts. If you’re displaying ads at the end of levels, it makes sense to ensure that the majority of users can progress to an array of levels.

Panelist Ben caused me to rethink my stance on Apple’s micropayments. if you recall, Apple’s next OS version, 3.0, introduces the capacity to extract micropayments from consumers using your applications. Ben commented that whilst a 30% revenue share for the hosting of the App Store, credit card processing and so on was fair enough, taking the exact same share for micropayments ‘just wasn’t cricket’, as we say in Britain. The point being that Apple aren’t doing any more work, other than the transaction processing.

Now to the good stuff.

For months — possibly even years — I’ve been banging on about the iPhone platform finally unlocking the opportunity for developers. Not everyone has been agreeing with me. Indeed quite a few purists in Europe have continued to assert the apparent superiority of the Symbian/Nokia platform for development. And whilst there’s certainly an argument to be had there, it’s — fundamentally — all about money. And there’s a reason Silicon Valley is going nuts for mobile. (Where ‘mobile’ equals ‘iPhone’). It’s the 800 million iPhone downloads, 70% of which are revenue generating. It’s the fact that you can, theoretically, become a millionaire overnight by developing a successful iPhone application, even though there are only 17m iPhones in existence.

So having been a diehard make-it-easy-for-developers chap, it was rather exciting to be surrounded by a few hundred of the Valley’s iPhone geniuses.

Panel questions arrived. I’d already been mentally willing Richard to pick me when he eventually opened the panel up to audience questions.

“Right, any quest..” he began. I shot up my hand.

“Ewan!” he said.

“Hi, I’d like to ask you about…”

I was getting stuck in.

“Wait a moment Ewan, introduce yourself for the audience,” prompted Richard.

Ah. Yes.

I couldn’t wait to ask my question.

“Given that Nokia expects to have their Ovi store on 400m handsets by the end of 2010, are you looking to develop for that platform?”

The moment I mentioned ‘Nokia’ I could feel the audience bristle.

One of the chaps on the panel looked at me — that ‘what the fluck’ look.

“Er, no,” he said.

He passed the microphone.

“No,” said the next chap.

“Er, we’re thinking about it,” said another.

“Errrr NO,” said the next.

Geez.

I felt like a pariah as the panel began to dissect their reasoning. The path to cash is unclear. It’s a massively fragmented handset population. It’s not centrally controlled and beautiful like the App Store. The Ovi Store doesn’t appear to be that ‘easy’ to work with. The capabilities of the development platform are unknown (at least within the Valley)… and so on.

Judging by the response of the audience and the other developers I spoke to after the panel, the ambivalence to Nokia’s Ovi offering — and the offerings of the other manufacturers — is echoed across the Valley.

Blackberry was mentioned once or twice. Surprising, given the amount of Blackberries in use across the States. But when you consider that a whopping amount of devices are corporate devices that are locked to prevent downloads — and that Blackberry App World isn’t pre-installed as yet — you can see why it’s getting little attention from this community.

Another surprise was the lack of Windows Marketplace discussion. Yes this was an iPhone developer meetup but you’d expect — or at least I expected — most developers to be reasonably platform agnostic or at least looking at other possibilities. Out of the 150 developers there, a show of hands revealed only one chap who had worked on the Windows platform.

This will change. Effort is driven by monetisation. If Ovi, Blackberry and Windows Mobile deliver on their promise, I’m sure the majority will give them the time of day. But right now it’s iPhone, iPhone, iPhone and I don’t blame them.

One company has bought our entire output exclusively, on-going. We are, in effect, becoming a private research company.

Our new client is unwilling to subsidise our existing audience of readers (300-400k last month) so the content that we’ll be creating — reports, video interviews and day-to-day industry news and analysis — will become proprietary from 27th of March. After this date, the public version of MIR will no longer be updated.

The nature of our agreement allows for corporate subscriptions to our content at £12,000 per annum, plus applicable taxes. I’m able to offer the first 10 subscriptions at half price until the end of the month.

Our subscribers will receive:

* Daily news, updates and opinion — similar to the existing MIR daily output.
* Provision of monthly reports on key issues and trends.
* Exclusive video interviews with influential movers and shakers from around the industry (similar to the ones we’ve been providing).
* Exclusive video research with end-users of mobile technologies — and the ability for client/subscribers to direct research
* Business development and corporate strategy — our network reaches far and wide.
* Expert news and analysis (think Mr Operator features on steroids), written by some of the best and most informed in the industry.
* We’ll retain the lively MIR editorial style in a weekly summary of what’s going on.

Our content is going to be delivered directly to subscriber intranets and via email newsletters.

If you’d like to discuss a subscription, drop me an email: ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

I’ll post more on this subject soon!

The good:

1. Call quality is excellent. Speaker sound from device is crisp and clear.
2. The phone has a nice weight. Feels good in hand in ‘candy bar’ mode.
3. All the settings options are now behind a ‘control panel’ icon.
4. The e-mail client is even further improved over the Nokia messaging version tested with the E63. It has better configuration options and graphics.
5. The build quality of the device feels solid and the internal QWERTY keypad has a good rubberised finish which improves accuracy and prevents sliding onto adjacent keys.
6. Has a great crisp screen with a nice bright finish which copes well in direct sunlight. Lacks the attractive FP2 transitions that the N86 had though.
7. The slide-out keyboard really has a ‘wow factor’ and impressed colleagues.
8. Best of all! The keypad tones are now off by default – the first Nokia I’ve ever tested where this isn’t the first thing I turn off!

The ‘not sure’:

1. If used flat on a desk with the QWERTY keypad open, the device falls backwards when the D-pad button is used.
2. With ‘tap to silence’ turned on the device only rings for a second or two before silencing (even if untouched on a desk) – could be a bug or user error, will check further.
3. No ‘full-stop and space’ feature on space-bar double-tap like the iPhone and Android.
4. Camera images are a bit too ‘contrasty’ with some colour over-saturated. So far ‘good enough’, but low light tests will be the decider (see the demo images below).
5. No charging via USB port – it’s only just being added to the more expensive N-series devices, but it would have been nice to see.

The bad:

1. When using the D-pad in QWERTY ‘mode’ it’s easy to hit surrounding short-cut keys such as Calendar or E-mail.  This seems much less of a problem in ‘candy bar’ orientation.
2. The E75, like the E71, is still a finger-print magnet – the patterned metal back is already looking mucky after only 15 minutes of handling.
3. My unit has a large gap at one end when the QWERTY keyboard is closed. Could be a manufacturing defect (although slide mechanism is rock-solid).
4. The memory card slot on this unit is so tight I can’t open it.
5. There’s no ‘leather’ sleeve like the E71 and E66 have – it might be a bit naff, but it saved my E71 from a certain death drop.

Overwhelmingly first impressions are good – including (and it’s been a long time since I’ve said this) the software enhancements which are beginning to address some of the usability / complexity issues Nokia and S60 have been suffering from for a while.

Here’s a few camera demo shots in good light.  Low-light ones (where most E-series struggle) to follow:

In her first piece, she’s looking at the wonders (and challenges) of Sky’s Mobile Remote Record service. (Sky, for those outside of the UK, is a satellite TV broadcaster).

Over to Vikki!

- – - – -

I’m a recent convert to the joys of Sky+. In fact, I’ve been a fan for years, but due to what I now presume to be laziness on the part of my Sky engineer – I hadn’t been able to set anything up to record ahead of time, only pause/play live television. Now, a secret socket has been found in my boiler cupboard and all is well.

This doesn’t however, stop me from forgetting entirely that I want to record something in the first place. In fact, because service has only been functioning fully for a few months, I find myself overlooking the fact that it’s now working at all.

So, today I unearthed an email from a friend talking about Sky Mobile’s Remote Record service and decided to give it a whirl. It’s pretty self-explanatory – providing you’ve got a Sky+ (or Sky HD) box, and subscription, you’ll be able to use your mobile or PC to remotely record anything you like.

First things first, even with said friend’s fabulously hyperlinked email; I wouldn’t call it the easiest installation in the world. It was straightforward and simple enough, but I’m unfamiliar with the Sky portal. There are so many different services available that you really need to concentrate to prevent from getting caught in an infinite loop.

Before I could do anything, I signed up for a My Sky account – which happily took all of a few minutes – then clicked on the most obvious-looking tab, Sky Mobile. From there, I was able to sign up by entering my mobile number and accepting the T&C.

After an instantaneous text, I should have been able to download the Sky Anytime app. Which I would have done if my e71 had been compatible, or more accurately – if the Sky website hadn’t told it wasn’t and blocked me from going any further. Bit of shame, as from the very beginning when purchasing my e71, I was told that anything that works on the N95 I should also be able to use.

BUT I am still able to text in alerts on this handset. Simply save a specific format (name of show, channel, date and time) as a draft and edit when you need to send.

That’s all very well, but is only really useful if you already know what you want to watch, or what time it’s on. Going on the basis of the N95 theory above, I managed to trial the Sky app on that handset, and the installation ran perfectly first time. I repeated the process above, and then connected phone to Sky box. Just click ‘interactive’ on your remote, and press ‘1′ for Sky Active. Scroll down to Sky Products from the menu, and then select Remote Record. Register a new ‘My Sky User’ (you’ll need to connect via a Freephone number), and type in your mobile number again.

I was however, still determined to get it to work on my e71. It’s lucky that I know some people who know far too many things about phones. After a quick call, I pasted the download link (as sent to me via text) into my web browser, used User Agent Switch to trick it into thinking I was an N95 and downloaded away. There’s no reason it should work on one and not the other. Connect phone to laptop via USB, and then use Nokia PC suite to transfer onto your e71.

On the big old screen of my e71, the app itself is beautiful – containing scrolling news updates, access to Sky Entertainment & Sports content, as well as your 7 day Sky TV Guide. You can also access Mobile TV from this portal as well, but it doesn’t appeal to me so I’m staying well clear. You can search by category as per a normal Sky set up, or for a keyword and then activate one-click record request.

From your PC, you simply access My Sky and pick which programmes to watch. My mind tends to steer towards frivolous Sky-related issues when I’m truly out and about, so the mobile app is much better for me.

There are a few snags; you need to send recording requests at least 30 minutes before the start of a programme, and the text confirmation messages cost 25p. Plus, there are network/ISP charges to factor in. However, all of these are minimal and utterly worth it when you’re short of time, or are halfway into work before you remember that the series finale of your favourite show is on at 6pm when you won’t be back till late.

- – - – -

Thanks Vikki!

25p per text? Well at least you finally got it on your Nokia E71… with a bit of jiggery pokery.

Has anyone else setup Mobile Remote Record? How did you get on with it?

The screen on the Joggler is incredibly bright and crisp and the device itself feels very solid and well-made with a fixed sturdy stand on the back. Also on the back of the unit is a power socket (No batteries here, this is a wired device), an ethernet port and an audio out jack. On the side is a USB socket and on top is an LED but I didn’t see any applications taking advantage of this. Inside the device is powered by an Intel Atom processor, has WiFi connectivity and runs an O2 branded version of the OpenFrame software (which appears to be based on Ubuntu linux with hacking opportunities aplenty!).

Overall I found the Joggler to be a bit of a disappointment. I’m familiar with the OpenFrame platform this is based on and was expecting to find the same Flickr, YouTube and RSS content included. Unfortunately the only place the Joggler can show photos from is the built-in 1GB of storage or a USB stick. O2 are definitely downplaying the photo frame aspect of the Joggler and concentrating on the O2 Calendar integration which itself has a few disappointing aspects such as not having any sync capabilities. I think it’s safe to assume that any family that’s tech-savvy enough to buy one of these on launch has someone in it that already uses an online calendar such as that provided by Exchange or Google and it would make sense to sync with that calendar. The kids might not need to know that Daddy is in a meeting with his boss but at least some availability information would be useful. The biggest disappointment of all is that I know the OpenFrame platform has a Dominos Pizza button and the Joggler does not!

I think the Joggler is a good start to what is essentially a new market for MNOs but I can’t help but think that an untouched OpenFrame device would be more appealing to a wider audience. I certainly know of some other MNOs that are working on similar device offerings so this should be a very interesting market to watch over the next 12 months.

Alongside the Joggler, O2 announced the O2 Calendar, a free family oriented web-based service that is available to anyone in the UK regardless of them being an O2 customer or not. For those users who are O2 customers the service provides free SMS reminders of appointments and integrates with the Joggler device. O2 also announced a family bolt-on for existing customers allowing one person to pay a monthly fee to add a number of other O2 customers to their family group. Once part of the group every family member can make calls or send SMS or MMS to other members of the group completely free of charge.

The O2 Joggler will be available in April from O2 stores and their website priced £149.99 or free if taken instead of a handset when upgrading or signing a new 18 or 24 month contract. Pricing for the O2 family bolt-on has yet to be announced.

If you’re new to the series, you can read his entire back catalogue here. And a quick overview of Mr Operator’s identity? Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to silence you in some manner. Mr Operator’s identity is a closely guarded secret. That’s because he’s in an influential position at an international mobile operator. And because he tells like he sees it. No sugar coating here. In his last column, he revealed that Google blindsided most of the mobile operators with their Latitude / Google Maps offering. In today’s column, he’s going to tell you why Palm Pre is 6 months too late to the party.

Over to Mr Operator…

- – - – -

Palmistry is the art of telling a person’s future by reading the lines on their hand. It’s not an exact science – in fact, it’s not really a science at all. Much like forecasting how well a new mobile handset will do, 6 months before public availability.

So many competing forces converge and collude to knock a supposed sure-fire winner off its trajectory to the stars. Coming out so early with very detailed demonstrations of your new device’s capabilities is either a very brave or very stupid move, in this age of quick-fire knock-off OS tweaks. While Apple stole a march with the iPhone, the 2nd (and now 1st) tier vendors have fallen over themselves to get touch devices out there. Yup, the first efforts were pretty dire, but remember in an industry of 12 month development cycles, those dire efforts are last year’s chip paper. The engineers and UI teams have moved on. You just know there’s a lot more where that came from. And where the innovation is in the OS, some changes can be made pretty quickly. No retooling required.

The Pre has (quite rightly) generated a fair old bit of good press for Palm. Like the mad uncle being welcomed home from the wilderness, the mobile industry press outside of the US have embraced Palm once more. No more Windows Mobile, all is forgiven. With some inductively-charged geek fruit and gestures in funny places to liven things up, 3MP + flash, plus some sqeezebox-calendar eye-candy and a removable battery, the Pre is everything to your inner geek the iPhone 3G should have been. But will it be enough?

European consumers just don’t know Palm. Even road warriors only have vague recollections of a monochrome device their IT department gave them to log sales notes on the fly, with a tiny stylus that got lost quicker than you can say Ford Mondeo. So can Palm hope to come to Europe and get a warm welcome? The devil is in the detail.

It will require a substantial MNO investment in marketing, which means exclusivity for at least 3-4 months, possibly more. Palm just won’t get the iPhone’s glorious free coverage in the general press.

At a possible RRP of $250 for a 2-year contract, we can guess that the Pre has a BOM [Bill of Materials] similar to the iPhone. All that goodness doesn’t come cheap – the inductive charging block is essentially a gimmick, as they have included a micro-USB port that is probably able to charge as well. If they plan to sell in China it will have to. If the block also did data transfer with a PC a la iPhone dock, now that would be nice. (Sorry, the geek in me getting carried away). Back to reality.

In the current market it’s all about margin, not ARPU (actually it was ever thus, but try getting away with old reporting tricks these days). The Emperor’s clothes are off, with no-one wanting to subsidise functionality that can’t be monetised well inside the churn timeframe. A device like the Pre is going to be a hard sell to consumers with no cash who still haven’t purchased / will never purchase an iPhone, and to MNO’s with even less cash to splash. O2 have reportedly sold a million iPhones, most locked into contracts with another year to run. Will iPhone owners abandon their ‘preciouses’ to take up with a Pre? Made by who? Not_flippin’_likely.

An LED flash, multiple calendars and inductive charger do not a sex/status symbol make.

To The Kids a Palm is something your dad had ages ago (maybe still does). To mums with prams most of the Palm’s business-oriented integration is pointless. To dads on work accounts it will be a bloody hard squeeze to justify in the current climate. Maybe Palm want to be what the Sidekick was 2 years ago. Times change. US kids got SMS religion. QWERTY email just isn’t the killer it used to be, and with 140 characters still annoyingly popular, don’t expect your ma to be clamouring for a mobile email device any time soon.

But the biggest challenge for Palm is in the form of Nokia. Having the glamourpuss E71 loose out in Barcelona to an upstart knocked up in a shed somewhere [the INQ1] has got to have galvanised them onward and upward. The first disappointing touch devices are, again, 12 months R&D delayed. The N86 is a very promising start. Add touch done well, plus the E71′s keyboard somewhere, and you’d have a million-a-week seller. Even if the Pre is twice the device on paper or in the hand, put it on a shop floor next to a QWERTY/Touch Nokia and weep.

I’d love to think I’m wrong here, but I can’t escape the nagging feeling that Palm Pre will arrive at the ball 6 months late, to find others with much bigger names in Europe are already waltzing away with the touch/QWERTY cash.

- – - – -

If you’d like Mr Operator to give an opinion on your company, your product offering or comment on news, drop me a note and we’ll see if we can arrange it.

There’s plenty of video upcoming from our trip to Prague this weekend including an exclusive first-look at the N86 in real-world conditions – as you can see above it’s a tough life, this international playboy-blogger thing we’ve got going on right now…

But, Hi-Def video takes some time to edit and publish (see the MWC hands-on until then) so here’s a quick update on the N86 we took with us – the one you will have been able to see ‘in the flesh’ if you were able to attend our own man Whatley’s ‘Mobile Geeks‘ event on Thursday… The unit’s an early prototype so these are a few more general observations.

The good:

Materials and build quality – Even on this prototype unit the finish is excellent.  The new (introduced with the N97) metal bezel styling looks good and feels good in the hand.  The unit is well weighted adding to the feeling of quality, without being too heavy (in my opinion).  The minuscule holes in the metal menu button that are invisible until it is illuminated are a particularly elegant touch.

The number keypad – Silly small number keys are banished in favour of good-sized number keys with a pleasant action.  There’s also some haptic feedback too on menu button clicks which feels nice.

The screen – The OLED unit is crisp and bright (with one caveat below) – it looks great with what feels like deeper blacks and brighter whites.  Performance is snappy, but slick transitions enhance this sensation even further.  Transitions between portrait and landscape mode where also sensed quickly and rendered well – this stood out next to it’s older brother the N82 which has always been a bit slow off the mark in this regard.

The camera (probably) – Although not performing reliably on this unit a good number of the images we did manage to take impressed as did the sample images in Barcelona so this, at least, bodes well.  Nokia are shouting as loudly about the imaging system upgrades as much as the raw megapixels and the signs are good.

Call and network performance - Not a surprise with Nokia any more, but the N86 handled poor signal and jumping between 2G and 3G networks with style were other handsets where upset (notably the G1).

The bad:

The function buttons - The main D-pad assembly and menu  key are still a bit ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’, but either way work well.  However, the two function keys at the top are low-profile with little travel and difficult to press with anything other than a fingernail.

The OLED screen in daylight – In contrast to its performance at any other time, in direct sunlight the screen washes out to nothing where the iPhone’s comes alive. Most handsets struggle in this situation, but an imaging-centric handset like this will probably see plenty of action outside.

The memory card slot - It’s only accessible by taking the rear cover off completely.  Admittedly with 8GB on-board it’s going to be needed less frequently than on other devices, but the process to remove the back cover is a bit fiddly and more elegant solution doesn’t feel like an unreasonable request.

The software – Yes this old chestnut… The N86 is already looking like a brilliantly refined handset and the hardware seriously impresses – this will surely take the N95′s mantle and attract a huge following – but with the tweaks, extra features and options the software is still a maze of menus which don’t always feel consistent.  It’s a wider failing across newer S60 devices, but how many excellent features will users simply never discover because they’re buried in the menus?

Having been very disappointed with my first hands-on N97 experience recently, this restores some of my faith in Nokia – the N86 is already hugely impressive…. but where it’s a hardware tour de force, the maze of menus and settings disappoints.  This has to be the next area of attention for Nokia.

Watch out for our hands-on video from Prague coming soon and fire us any questions in the comments.

And I’m one of them.

Esoteric, meaning ‘only for the initiated’, is most definitely the description for this new service.

It doesn’t have a name. It doesn’t need one.

It’s mobile 3.0.

Or telephony 10.0.

This is the next generation of mobile telephony services that will offer me a significantly enhanced telephony experience, without the rubbish. It will enable me to completely use my mobile operator like a ‘bit pipe’. I’ll buy ‘unlimited’ landline calls and ‘unlimited’ data. That’s all I need. I won’t have to augment my experience with one or two providers that don’t *really* do what I need very well.

Whenever I walk out the door, I simply pick up one of my 10 devices running on an array of different networks. When I make a call, you’ll see one number calling you. One identity to rule them all. So whether I’m on my o2 iPhone, my Orange LG Renoir, my Vodafone Blackberry… whatever, when I call, provided you’ve got my identity in my phone book, you’ll always know it’s me.

Call me and every single one of my devices will ring concurrently. When I answer, the others will stop ringing. One key press and I can move you from my Vodafone Blackberry to my BT landline. Or to my Hotel phone. It’s so bleeding edge, when you’re on the train and those stupidly annoying beeps sound (you know, when the doors close), the service will strip out those sounds and an array of interference.

Another key press and I can put you into conference with the Mobile Industry Review editorial team. I just press ‘*5′ and woosh. Dan Lane, Ben Smith and James Whatley get a call from me. When they answer, they’ll get put straight into the call.

Or if I press *6, I can dial my wife, my two brothers, their partners, my mother and father (on both his mobile handsets) and put them straight into conference with us.

If you get cut off for any reason, just dial me. The system will recognise I’m on the conference call and stick you straight into the chat.

For those who don’t answer my pre-defined conference call request, they get a text message, from my ID, with a request to join.

And that’s another thing. Unified text messaging. Every text I send and receive is copied into my Google Mail.

Of course, setting up group chat, divert, push-one-for-help kind of things — all built straight into the service.

Indeed, pressing *8 immediately begins recording the call and streams it straight into an mp3 file on to the frontpage of Mobile Industry Review and into a blog post or out immediately on to Twitter. (It, er, does announce this to all parties and it requires me to confirm the action… just in case the phone slips or something.)

Instant public and globally available conference calls. Love it.

And voicemail? It’s automatically transcribed and the audio is emailed and available for query on 6 of the most popular mobile platforms a la Apple’s Voicemail system.

Did you say Vodafone Passport?

No?

Good.

Because I don’t need it any more. I can’t call the States from my Vodafone handset. I still haven’t phoned them up and ‘switched’ that function on to allow me to pay some ridiculous rates. I dunno, 1.50 a minute? From my mobile?

No.

It costs nothing. Next to nothing. I get it at wholesale, whatever I call.

When I’m roaming — when I’m in the States, for example, I get exactly the same service. No roaming costs.

Annoyingly, it costs more for me to call the local pizza place, than it does to call New York. But it’s wholesale rates and it’s pittance.

If you’ve only got one handset and you’re on PAYG, this is not for you. It’s a service aimed at the planet’s ‘mobile global elite’. And I’m loving the concept.

I guarantee you haven’t ever heard of this provider. I doubt they’ll sell for a billion dollars. Their target market is just far too niche. But they don’t mind. They’re focusing on making the best possible mobile telephony experience, bar none.

I don’t imagine I’ll significantly reduce my mobile costs. That’s not really a concern for me in this context. Instead I expect I’ll be able to reduce my Vodafone spend from approximately 500 per month to about 50. I then reckon I’ll rack up about 50 quid’s worth of wholesale usage in a given month.

I should be able to begin using it in about two weeks. When I can, I’ll publish more details and I’ll get some demonstration video footage up.

This was particularly relevant to me since I’ve spent most of the week running out of Blackberry battery power at about 2pm much to my *intense* annoyance.

Have a look at this development coming to mobile handsets. Here’s the video:

Techtium Demonstrate Their Mobile Power Products from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

The chaps behind it are from Techtium. I can’t wait to get something like this. The flexibility of having TWO power supplies is fantastic. You can rely on your main battery — supplementing when/if you need to with any AAA you can find at any corner shop. Genius when you’re roaming.

N86 First Look At The Launch Event from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

During filming we noted the handset was labelled as ‘N85 8MP’ and speculated whether that was a late change in naming (extending the N85 range like the N95 did with several variants) or just a disguise or an error. Having spent some more time with the device and noted the ‘N85′ term cropping up in some of the software config (the Exif camera data – other areas use the anonymous ‘NXX’).
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We now think a late branding change is the most likely explanation – possibly to extend the life of the current N85 and highlight the sheer number of differences between the two devices (which go beyond just the imaging components).

Yesterday evening we sat down with Nokia’s Niklas Savander to have a chat — not your usual ‘how’s your EBITDA’ style conversation. Instead we asked him what his first and current handsets were. We asked what his favourite movie was. We asked him what was next with Nokia services, what his children thought of Nokia and what third party applications he liked.

In short, it’s an alternative interview. Let’s talk to the man rather than the company. They don’t come much bigger than the likes of Niklas. He runs Nokia’s Services offering (“Executive Vice President, Services” to give him his formal title) and he’s also on the Nokia Executive Board. We thoroughly enjoyed it and we’ll be bringing that to you very shortly.

You can read Niklas’ bio here.

Watch the video here:

Niklas Savander of Nokia: The Alternative Interview from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

Nokia have launched the E55 and E75 business handsets – Like so much of their recent announcements the hardware of these devices really impresses.  I challenge anyone not to be impressed with the build quality and attention to detail…  The E75 is as widely leaked.  The E55 is a pleasant surprise – even thinner than it’s older sibling the E51, it packs a huge battery and an almost Blackberry Pearl-like keyboard that’s 5 keys wide (each one serving as 2 characters across a QWERTY keyboard) with the central 3 laid out in a traditional 1 to 9 block.  In the hand it feels exceptional.  Software is improved – Nokia have finally included the improved mail client out of the box – but compared to the exceptional hardware build it’s still to easy to get buried in menu systems or the complexity of the S60 OS.

Nokia and Microsoft have launched the Ovi Store and Windows Marketplace respectively – To complete the set (Android announced paid-for apps yesterday), today the last two major platforms added their official ‘market places’.  The Windows Marketplace was announced without fanfare… a box-ticking exercise amidst higher-profile news (Windows Mobile 6.5 and MyPhone).  The Ovi store came with more details – notably operator billing, the inclusion of ‘content’ (games and media) and a social recommendations engine, but questions about user experience and quality assurance of the applications remain.  Ultimately this is unglamourous news, but signals (if ever it were needed) that app discovery is going to get great deal easier for consumers very soon.  It’s ubiquity, however,  will mean it’s not a factor that will attract consumers to any particular platform.  The cynics amongst us (and there are a few) wonder if, given the slow speed the idea has been taken up whether it will be another 2 to 3 years before we see them well executed.

Android news is really thin on the ground and Microsoft are everywhere - There are rumours of an HTC G2 Android device being announced later during the show and Huawei have a non-working prototype of their forthcoming handset, but otherwise we’re set to wait until later in the year for LG and Samsung’s Android offerings.  Conversely, many are noting that both have instead made significant announcements of handsets running Windows Mobile 6.5 with Toshiba and Asus also in on the act.  With Steve Ballmer fronting the Microsoft press event it was slick, if not a bit cringe-worthy at times (they’re not employing the cream of comedy script writing), but it’s worth noting that we’ve seen absolutely no presence from Google here at all representing Android.  At all.  And with this many developers attending that seems really odd.

Day 2 looks promising with another widely-leaked Nokia announcement due and some opportunities to meet a few less high-profile companies.

But it’s far from a dead-loss… the real value of these events is the unplanned meetings.  Like Andrea, the Italian industry analyst, we met this morning whilst marching around Barcelona’s marina event in search of a Nokia event.  Fresh back from Rome, I still couldn’t understand why there was so muh talk of mobile TV (DVB-H) from Italy, but little evidence of any real usage.  Andrea assured us we should believe our eyes – Vodafone and TIM were leaving their mobile TV offering to go stale… un-marketed and un-loved.  Three, although more actively pushing the service (as we witnessed in their stores) was struggling financially.  The official subscriber numbers, he said, were misleading – they represent customers receiving free access to mobile TV services as part of a subscription, not a source of additional revenue for the operators.

And so, in 5 minutes, more useful information than all of the heavily scripted and stage-managed Microsoft event that followed… Perhaps we should scrap all our briefings and hang round the bar a bit more… Hmmmm….

He’s been crazy busy over recent weeks and, indeed months, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to bring you more of his pieces. I know that they are immensely popular — it’s all down to his availability.

If you’d like to catch up on the background to Mr Operator, I suggest reading this introductory piece. You can read all of Mr Operator’s pieces here.

Here’s a quick overview. His identity is a closely held secret. Think of him like Top Gear’s Stig.

He is that man. He’s the guy you pitch at one of the world’s largest international operators. Hardly a week goes by where he doesn’t send me a text privately ridiculing yet another high profile startup that’s just been sent marching, tail between their legs, from his office. He does the best he can to help smooth rough diamonds but, geez, the stories he tells me. He doesn’t ridicule them for spite. It’s frustration. He’s hugely frustrated with the total lack of understanding displayed by most entrepreneurs trying to do business with operators.

Let me try and imitate Jeremy Clarkson.

“Some say he was raised by wolves in the Russian tundra — and might have a mobile base station as a parent. All we know is he’s called Mr Operator…”

Here we go:

- – - – -

There’s been a lot of Latitude noise in the last few days. The tabloid press has raised the usual spectres – spying partners, snooping bosses – all the while blissfully unaware of the irony. An industry that prides itself on deception, underhand reporting tactics, anonymous tipsters and general peeping into other’s lives to make money shouldn’t protest so loud methinks.

You can see The Sun / Express headline now: “Google Got Me Fired”…”Google Destroyed My Marriage”…”Google Abducted My Child”. The fact that any parties involved had to explicitly opt-in to the upgrade/download, had to sign in, had to turn Latitude on, had to add contacts, had to set their location sharing on – mere technicalities. No-one’s going to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

However it is this reaction and the great unwashed’s assumed agreement that will have MNO’s thinking twice. No-one will want to be the first to launch something that will be dubbed the ‘SpyPhone’. The fact that all MNO’s have – to one degree or another – relationships with Google, that a large majority of their devices support Latitude, and in some cases they actively pushed Google services to customers (T-Mobile) just adds to the apprehension. Some will be feeling a bit blindsided by this – word on the street is that no-one saw this coming so soon. Even product managers who meet up with Google reps on a near-daily basis were in the dark. This is a release worthy of Cupertino.

Regardless, the LoMoSoSo cat/bag ratio is lower than it was a week ago.

Right now it is the geekerati who are playing with Latitude, and mulling over its limitations, possibilities and implications. Much dire talk has been made of the chances of location-based social networks now Google has made its move. Companies are frantically scrabbling to find points of differentiation, to spin themselves as being still relevant in a post-Latitude world. Location Product Managers are being questioned by the C-level, and in turn they are questioning existing providers and those pitching – “What’s your answer to Latitude?” “Why shouldn’t I just wait?” etc. Crunched VC’s with little free cash will be taking the blowtourch to LBS business plans over the next few months. Expect some LoMoSoSo firesales come summertime. As if it wasn’t hard enough already…

Latitude 1.0 has shown what the platform can do. We’ll have to wait for the next evolution to see relevance come into the mix, and it is then that the masses will see the advantages. Others on this site and elsewhere have raised the challenge that mere location is not worthy, but context is. Right now you need to make your own context, and that’s just too hard a sell for anyone outside the circle of S60 / iPhone fanbois. Putting the onus on the user to join the dots won’t work. Like Amazon’s recommendations, Latitude needs to be pushing stuff to you in a manner indistinguishable from magic. ‘Can’t-resist’ offers from retailers you love, proximity notifications from friends you like, much more relevant results from searches. The magic, the added value, plus bringing the privacy controls more to the fore will greatly ease the sell to the masses.

If you are at a loose end, you should be able to broadcast as such to those friends nearby. You don’t need to know Bob is a block away beforehand, and anyway that’s too stalkerish for most, and mapwatching is a timewaster for you. So Bob receives a tap on the shoulder that you are around and up for a drink, knowing he can ignore without you being aware of the rejection if desired. The paradigm is already there in the many requests for SocNet connections we ignore. Indeed, rejection of meeting requests via Outlook with the “Reject and do not respond” has been with us for two decades. It’s become accepted not to friend someone back. No RSVP necessary.

For a family on holiday, Latitude means parents and teens can split up. Mum off to look at shoes, dad off to check out that Vespa dealer, teens off to hang out around that cool fountain where all the locals were spotted last night. Meeting up a few hours later for lunch just became a whole lot easier. Fire up GMaps, click on the rest of the family and choose ‘Get directions’. Dead easy. Of course this relies on roaming data being cheap enough, but we are getting there. Certainly within a year or so with EU regulation looming unless MNO’s pull finger, the idea of your mobile being a useful tool for holiday navigation is quite viable. Imagine disappearing into winding backstreets, following your nose through bazaars, souks, architecture, whatever rings your bell. But knowing that you can easily and quickly find your way back to others in your party.

I envisage a ‘Degrees of Awareness’, where your best friend/sibling/spouse and you both are set to always visible, always proximity-alarmed. You always want to know when they are near. Unless you are doing something deceptive, you’d have no reason not to do this. However your colleagues are a level or two down. You might be interested in knowing if a business contact is stuck in the same snowed-in airport, maybe not.

The apparent suspicion that some claim would be leveled at those appearing offline is a non-issue. Look at how often apps on handsets log out / crash these days. How often do mobiles go out of coverage? The continued realities of mobile life will be the perfect reason, should – however unlikely it may be – someone confront you. Whether you were the victim of an app crash / poor coverage or were deliberately hiding is entirely between you and your mobile.

So unfounded angst / tabloid hypocrisy aside, what does the next year hold?

1) No MNO will actively push Latitude. There’s no service Latitude enables they can monetise anyway. They won’t block upgrades, but they won’t be advertising it either.

2) Google will enhance the IM function, to allow GTalk / Jabber use right from the map display. GTalk will become sexy. Already the status in Latitude pulls from / pushes to GTalk.

3) Added levels of granularity / contact grouping will evolve, with time/day of week settings too. Just as mobiles can block / allow calls from different groups based on time/day/profile, so will Latitude publish / hide / alert you accordingly.

Look for Latitude 2.0 to take off in 1-2 years time, once the general privacy panic has evaporated under the sunny beam of real-world usefulness. Assuming the API’s are exposed, handset vendors will begin to integrate the proximity info into contact lists, and add menu options bringing the privacy options more to the fore. These may tie in with API’s for other LBS apps a la Fire Eagle, but Google have already denied this is on the cards, citing privacy concerns. Maybe some clever-clogs will do some sort of PC or mobile daemon to bring the Latitude functionality into the open. Whether Google can share API’s with handset vendors but not others will be interesting to watch. There will certainly be cachet in being the first to bring deep Latitude integration to a device.

Of great interest will be what the new Yahoo! CEO decides to do with Fire Eagle. It’s been flapping along for a few years now, garnering much kudos within LBS circles for its openness but zero attention from the world in general. There’s not much difference in functionality, apart from the open/shut API thing. Brand Google is a massive leg-up over the myriad of Fire Eagle apps, and if Yahoo! can get over the privacy aspects, so can Google. But if there’s value in remaining closed, they will do so. Google aren’t a charity, and Fire Eagle has yet to show a valid strategy for continuing to suck up resource from Yahoo!. Yahoo! don’t have a Mobile GMaps to nail Fire Eagle onto, and all the Fire Eagle players are so far below the consumer radar they might as well be under water.

Overall Latitude has been a long time coming, and was always going to cause a flap. Two years from now, it will be mature and integrated into modern life. Bring it on.

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Excellent. Thank you very much Mr Operator.

If you’d like to get Mr Operator’s viewpoint on an issue, drop me a note and I’ll suggest it. And if you’d like Mr Operator to give you a perspective on how an international operator would react to doing business with you, let me know. But be warned, we’ve tried this before and, with a few exceptions, the reality is often not publishable.

Don’t bother reading on if the headline means nothing to you. It’s geekery time. It is most definitely time for the ‘science bit’.

Yes.

Howler Tech is live.

Dan Lane and Ed Hodges — regular contributors here at Mobile Industry Review — have come out of the shadows.

If you’ve ever spoken to them or their colleague Jay Fenton (also a contributor now and again), you’ll have had to smile politely when they tell you they’re in ‘stealth’ mode.

They’ve spent many a networking evening dying to tell everyone about what they’ve been up to. But the actual stuff they’ve been working on is not that far off rocket science. Indeed, if you’ve ever watched any of the Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles episodes, Dan, Ed and Jay should be looking over their shoulders for any 6ft blonde Terminator T-888s out to neutralise them. I’ve not seen Caraya, their product/service in the flesh. But I’ve seen the bits and pieces that make it up. And it does look a bit SkyNet to me.

The sort of thing that a lot of telecoms industry giants should have seen coming and snapped up last year.

I expect there’s still potential to buy the company for a decent sum now, but I reckon the valuation will sky rocket shortly. Enough to justify the simmering telecoms warchests, I’m sure.

Wossit do? Well I can tell you, because it’s sort-of public.

It converts voice.

Quite a simple ask, you might think. But no. The fact that I can’t walk down sodding Tottenham Court Road without losing a signal or talk to you on my Blackberry Bold, or hold a decent audio conference with chaps abroad — that shows that voice isn’t fixed yet. It’s not fixed because we’re now using a plethora — a veritable PLETHORA — of communications codecs to transmit voice.

Try this on for size: You’re in the States on a CDMA Sprint mobile handset right? Our colleague is on a landline in Canada. We all dial into a conference bridge. I call from my 3Skypephone using SkypeOut.

How many codecs d’ya reckon are in use?

Yeah. No wonder the quality’s shit. My voice has to be transcoded in real time (or, more likely after 2-3 seconds of annoying delay) from one format to another format and another.

Echo.

Did… did… did you… can you … can you hear me? Hello?

Rubbish!

Enter Caraya. Software based packet processing. Instead of vomiting out maybe a few hundred channels (MAXMIUM) like the usual kit out there, Caraya — combined with a few smart Terminator SkyNet style chips — knocks out thousands upon thousands of channels simultaneously.

Nice.

So that cash you’re blowing on codec conversion systems? Give Howler a call. If you’d like an intro let me know or simply hit’em up at http://www.howlertech.com/.

If you’d like to read what analyst Michael Schwartz reckons about Howler, see this link.

PS: When Howler is sold for $100m, remember you heard that prediction here first.

And, er, I’ll carry your briefcase, Ed.

Fun Text are ALL about modified greetings messaging. They’ve been hard at it this year.

Having gone live with Sprint, T-Mobile and 3, Fun Text are also hitting the handsets directly so as well as sending a text message you can choose to ‘send a fun text’. It’s a fascinating viewpoint on what you can do with greetings.

I particularly liked this quote of James’:

There aren’t that many social reasons to send your own photo, whereas there’s a lot of social reasons to say ‘sorry’, ‘I love you’, ‘miss you’, ‘happy birthday’, ‘thank you’ and so on.

Yup. I buy that.

Here’s the video:

MIR Developers: James Pycock of Fun Text from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

The easiest way to find people and places nearby that you will like. A Rummble can be any place – restaurant, shop, photo opportunity, a favourite walk.

And you must definitely download the Rummble iPhone application. Find it in the App Store.

What, then, does Andrew think about Google’s latest Latitude addition to Google Maps? Well I strongly encourage you to get a cup of coffee, sit back and read this piece below. If you’re running a service with the words ‘mobile’, ‘social’ and ‘network’ in it, I think Andrew’s perspective will be hugely relevant.

Over to Andrew:

- – - – -

For the last 3 years now I’ve been crowing at conferences that “Who’s nearby” is not a business. I drew this conclusion from running playtxt, Europe’s first location-based mobile social network.

It started in 2002 and we had an Alpha launch in 2003. It was ridiculously early to market. Back in 2002 most normal people (i.e. those for whom a “tweet” today is still something only birds do) did not know what a social network was, let alone a mobile location-based social network. Thanks to MySpace, Facebook and the inevitable march of technology, even my own mother is now aware of social networking, SMS and GPS.

By 2005 Google had bought our main competitor Dodgeball and although the mobile operators were still charging for Cell ID lookups (ludicrously, they are STILL trying to!) I already believed it was only a matter of time before location became a commodity. It would too easy to do for start-ups to do and even easier for others such as Facebook, which was on its ascent.

I decided that “who’s nearby?” was never going to create a multi-million pound business and I made three predictions, some which are still relevant today:

* GPS will be in every phone as cameras were then becoming. (GPS chipsets are extremely cheap, power consumption is becoming lower, processing power higher and Galileo is on the horizon -literally, haha).
* One of the gorillas (Google, Yahoo et al) will release a free Cell ID/Location API. (Google have and its excellent).
* “Who’s nearby” will also become a commodity

For the last 2 years I’ve been telling any start-up which is building its own Cell ID database, that it must be mad. I see no business model. Google about as likely to charge for Cell ID lookup as it is for its maps API; and that likelihood is slim.

There was (and is) money to be made with tracking and Cell ID technology, but both industries begin with “S” and neither spell the world “Social”. Instead, it is Security (child tracking, staff tracking) and of course Sex (proximity dating, adult services); infact any vertical where a premium can be demanded – we know that fear and shagging both command strong emotions which can result in a buying decision. Wondering “Where are my friends?” does not; unless of course you’re intensely paranoid or have VERY accommodating friends.

There is no mobile internet: there is only the internet.

This has been my other crusade for the last 2 years; and this is probably what Google believes too. What I mean is, that fix-line world-wide-web access is the black & white TV of the internet. Amazing in itself, but without the full functionality of what we recognise as “television” today.

Location, portability and the need for personalisation (a mobile being such a small, personal device) are the three missing dwarfs which give us our Seven Dwarfs of the modern internet. (The first four were IMHO: the web browser as user interface, freedom to publish without government or minority corporate control, always-on fixed cost access, and broadband bandwidth; Snow White being the internet itself).

So in the near future (3-5years?) no one will talk of the “mobile” internet but simply, the internet. You will have an iphonesque device (in size & looks if not in O/S which you take home and plug into your 24″ screen and keyboard …we’ve still a decade to go before we type goodbye to Mr Qwerty and say hello to HAL.

Be under no delusion, Latitude is Googles Trojan horse into the social networking space.

After Googles purchase of Dodgeball it was clear they had every intention to roll out a service such as Latitude and they are perfectly positioned to do so.

Almost by-passing online social networking entirely (aside from Orkut which only took hold in Brazil) I believe Google will pursue a wide-reaching mobile social play. Google will build up a critical mass of users on Latitude; and they will join because:

* It is Google (so its trustworthy; yes still)
* It’s easy to use – simple UI and simple privacy model: Automatic, Manual or Hide your location (or as I prefer: Honest, Lie or Paranoia)
* It has reach (27 countries at launch, lots of handsets, no GPS required)
* It’s free

They will then likely launch an API (in the process solving some of the standardisation and interconnectivity problems – possibly using the new OAuth hybrid or equivalent) but also roll out other functionality enhancements. Although the latter may take longer than you think.

Latitude has lots wrong with it too e.g. Gmail import only (where is XFN Social Graph import or device address book comparison?) status update is crying out for Twitter integration and a hook into FireEagle (with which Latitude does not compete, yet) would all be very welcome (the last two are unlikely for political reasons but would be a fantastic nod to the open ecosystem) and don’t forget part of Latitude’s beauty is its simplicity; and Google have time on their side.

Many of us have been waiting for location-based services to come of age for YEARS! but in reality we’re still in the early adopter curve. In fact, I’d go even further than that. At BeingDigital in 2008 I stated on stage to a deluge of ridicule, that Social Networking wasn’t yet main stream. The laughing continued until I asked how many parents AND siblings of delegates had email? The answer was predictable: virtually everyone. Then I asked how many parents and siblings were also on a social network; over 75% of the hands dropped.

150 million people on Facebook is a lot, but 3.2 billion people have mobile phones: that’s a lot more. Email is mainstream, social networking is still maturing. Eventually it will of course become part of everything we do “online” rather than be a destination, with your social graph becoming portable and also actually owned by you, not FaceSpace.

So what does this all mean?

1) Location is already commodity AND your friends location will become a commodity. Any service will be able to plug in and use this data (with the right permissions). Its already happening – checkout Yahoo’s FireEagle which is an aggregator of location between services.

2) If you’re a start-up building LBS, Cell ID, friends nearby services, or anything else which is being commoditised as we speak, see above. Loopt; west coast startup run by a bright 24 year old entreprenuer – nice guy, flawed business plan. $13million+ in funding, nudging just 1 million users after 3 years with low engagement metrics. Differentiator? There isn’t one. Case closed, game over.

3) If you’re running anything with the words “mobile social network” in the title, lock yourself in a room with your team and work out how you’re going to save your business. That means innovate. Mobile is not a differentiator, its an inevitability.

At Le Web 07 I met with Christian, Founder of Skout. He had built a cool location based mobile social network (LoMoSoSo anyone?). By Q1 2008 when I met him in San Francisco, he’d already realised that competition was fierce and the concept was flawed — and that was before the gorillas had waded in. I implored him to change strategy (something which in fact he’d already started doing). He chose dating. It’s a smart move. Dating generates money-and lots of it. Proximity dating, or in fact “mobile dating” in general has never been done really well (even Mr Arrington agrees).

As a LBS start-up, you need to think about adding distinctive value for users; differentiating on location is an oxymoron. I know some of you are making money, some of the pure play mobile social networks are even profitable – great. But there’s an iceberg ahead and it may be bigger than it looks: just ask Captain Edward John Smith.

The future is relevance; the context of not only where I am but what I’m doing, who I am, where I will be. In summary: It’s about the data, stupid.

And that will be what I write about in my next post.

- – - – -

And I for one, Andrew, am very much looking forward to your next post. Thank you for taking the time.

Get Andrew on Twitter: @andrewjscott.

3G mobile data (and its developments) is good but suffers from issues like flaky coverage, cell capacity constraints and backhaul bottlenecks. Public WiFi has coverage limitations but where it does work it generally delivers decent speeds and consistent service. The lack of roaming agreements between the big service providers is a frustration and I’d like to see a move towards ubiquitous coverage via more service provider co-operation, i.e. if you can find a signal you know you can use it, with service differentiation based around price, and value-adds.

Devicescape recently undertook some research into their user base to understand what WiFi users want from service providers and how people use WiFi. Key findings from the report showed:

• An overwhelming number of WiFi users expect WiFi while on the road (91%)
  
• Most respondents want citywide WiFi (84%) and many are willing to pay for it (56%)
  
• When travelling, the most popular device for accessing WiFi was the smartphone, such as an iPhone (vs.laptops)
  
• The overwhelming majority of smartphone users (81%) prefer using WiFi over 3G for browsing Web sites, downloading data, Google searches and sending e-mail
  
• 86% of respondents want manufacturers to build WiFi into their handsets
  
• 82% of respondents want the service provider to provide an overall 3G/WiFi data package

Whilst this research is focused on existing WiFi users it does show that people who already use WiFi don’t see 3G as an alternative wireless access method but as complementary to WiFi. I’ve blogged about Devicescape before; what they do is make WiFi access simple. Devicescape Easy Wi-Fi automates the hotspot login process to create a seamless user experience. Increasingly, this means Devicescape is hidden from the user and the service provider’s software uses Devicescape to manage the WiFi login process. DeFi Mobile uses this model and makes the hotspot login process fast and automatic. This simplicity addresses what has always been a barrier to simple WiFi use – the login process.

The next step for service providers is to create a completely seamless user experience across both 3G and WiFi. Users should not have to decide themselves which wireless access technology to use. The software should determine whether 3G or WiFi is appropriate. For the 3G service providers it makes sense to ship traffic via WiFi where they can, in order to preserve cell capacity for non WiFi users.

Mobile VoIP is an interesting but potentially very confusing (especially for Normobs) part of the WiFi market, so it’s good to see LowCostMob bringing some clarity here. Comparing mobile VoIP is a bit of a black art because each service provider has a slightly different take on the market and it’s not just a simple matter of comparing tariffs. Users need to compare functionality and features as well as prices to determine which service provider to use. Some clarity here will help to drive progress in this part of the WiFi market.

—

Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

Instead of bringing you updates, perspective and on-the-road tests from somewhere in London, we decided to take the MIR Show on the road. The first stop, of course, was Rome.

We flew out on the 730am British Airways flight to Rome and arrived on schedule at Leonardo da Vinci airport. We hit the hotel, dumped most of the non-essential kit and headed off to the Colosseum to begin the filming.

We used both Google Maps and Nokia Maps to get about the place. Central Rome is mostly walkable. The massive FAIL that is Nokia Maps (I thought it would be at least ‘ok’) came as a complete surprise.

Also, the G1 handset roamed perfectly… except for Google Maps — which spent the day displaying an error to an increasingly frustrated Ben Smith. (Ben was also trying to demonstrate Nokia Maps).

Dan Lane decided to stick with his iPhone 3G. Lucky he did. We were able to navigate around Rome thanks to Google Maps and the iPhone.

I really thought the Italians would be ultra hip — both in their fashion sense and their handset selection. Instead most of the locals around Rome were wearing relaxed garb. And when they weren’t kissing each other passionately (it is, yes, a very romantic place), they were talking on their Motorola RAZRs.

This, I think, is one of the biggest misconceptions I had about Italians and their mobile handsets: I thought they’d be up to date. I thought they’d be big into data. I thought there would be handsets all over the place. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

The best handsets we saw in use? Seriously: Motorola RAZRs. Or the odd three year old Sony Ericcson.

Once or twice I saw an iPhone — and then realised it belonged to someone from the UK.

This, despite the fact that Vodafone Italy retails both the Blackberry Storm AND the iPhone 3G.

Perhaps Saturday and Sunday were the wrong days to go and do some normob watching in the capital city? Maybe most people were out in the provinces, leaving the city centre to the proles on their RAZRs?

I wonder if Italians really DO care more about talking? Rather than texting and twittering? From what we observed over the weekend I’d say that looks to be the case. The city locals were very clearly carrying about MOBILE TELEPHONES — RAZRs and ultra slim 2-3 year old Sony Ericssons and using them to talk on. The only folk using data services on their handsets appeared to be us.

Anyway we filmed a lot of content and all things being equal, we’ll be publishing two MIR Shows from Italy soon.

Fancy a few pics meantime?

Here’s Dan on the phone to his other half, reveling in the fact that his 3-Like-Home service didn’t cost him anything extra to phone home from Rome:

Here’s Ben Smith getting more and more agitated by his N82 with Nokia Maps. Dan had already plotted the location to the Spanish Steps within 10 seconds whilst we waited for the Nokia to get on the same page:

We did some filming at most of the major landmarks. This one is Il Vittoriano:

Next stop? I’m thinking Prague. Or Marrakech.

Starting this Saturday with Rome, Italy.

The model for each destination on the MIR Show schedule is simple:

1. We’re taking the crew — that is Dan Lane, Ben Smith and James Whatley — to do some on-location filming.

2. We’ll produce two MIR Shows from the city, so that every Monday fortnight on-going, we’ll bring you some fairly decent informed entertainment.

3. The Shows will most certainly include ‘Ben’s Facts’ — a real favourite amongst regular viewers, this time expanded to give you a perspective on the destination.

4. We’ll be contacting local MIR readers and shining the light on the mobile activities of their companies and discovering how they ‘mobile’.

5. We’re going to try doing a normob walk-about (that is, shove the camera in the faces of unsuspecting yet English-speaking locals and demand to see what phone they’re using). That might need a bit of work. But James Whatley, purveyor of normob-walkabouts for MIR, is well up for it.

6. The roaming and equipment dilemmas are going to be priceless. Italy, of course, is covered by 3′s 3-Like-Home deal whereby if you’re a UK customer, you can roam free on their sister Italian network and use your minutes like you would at home (and data, too). But when we’re off elsewhere… well, that’s going to be interesting.

8. We’ll do the filming during Saturday and in the evening, we’ll be hosting a relaxed meetup for anyone who’s interested in the evening, along with, I suspect a bit of proper Italian pizza.

9. We aim to fly early on Saturday morning — and back into London on Sunday morning. So a literal flying visit for each city.

This Saturday, I’m joined by Dan Lane and Ben Smith. (James Whatley unfortunately had a schedule conflict for this one, but we’ve got him for the rest).

Rome Recommendations
We’d like to try a bit of crowd-sourcing rather than turning up in Rome and finding the nearest rubbish tourist restaurant. Thus we’re looking for recommendations on the following:

* Your suggestions for where we should film [Backgrounds to where we hold conversations about news and so on.]
* Restaurants for lunch
* Bars & restaurants for dinner
* Things we should do and see
* Stuff you’d like us to capture on film
* People & companies you recommend we hook up with
* Mobile related services you think we should check out — either IN Rome or services/hardware you’d like us to test while we’re there

If you’ve got any ideas, either mail me or comment below.

All things being equal, look-out for the first MIR Show from Rome this coming Monday.

(Colosseum image via Wikipedia).