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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In today’s Part One, we talk about the technology we’ve brought, we visit some landmarks and spot-the-handset, we try making a video call to James back in London and we discuss the merits of cameras on handsets.

Here’s the video:

Part Two is coming soon!

They’ve been doing a lot of work helping operators such as Telefonica and manufacturers such as Motorola establish Virtual Developer Labs to help mobile developers gain access to pre-release hardware via DeviceAnywhere — and often at heavily subsidised rates.

We talked to DeviceAnywhere about that, then watch as I surprise the chap by demanding to make a phone call from one of the devices there in the data centre rack on the stand.

Are their handsets actually real? Watch the vid as we actually we prove it…

Here’s the video:

Here’s the video:

We were delighted to be able to sit down with Jason and find out more about Skydeck — and particularly when they’re coming to Europe.

Once again, take a coffee, sit back and watch this one, particularly if you’ve got an interest in the mobile social networking.

Here’s the vid:

Take ten minutes, get yourself a coffee and sit and watch Peter’s walk-through demonstration. To begin with, expect to think ‘oh, that’s neat’. Toward the end, I hope you’ll start to think ‘ahhhh, now this is rather smart’.

And remember, everything you’re seeing is being done via a GPRS connection. We tried filming this whole thing three times outside at the Mobile World Congress and each time Peter’s 5800 Nokia kept on dropping wifi signal. So we reverted back to GRPS.

And it still works phenomenally well.

Here’s the video:

Here’s the video:

His answer was one of the most interesting we’ve ever had on Mobile Industry Review…

This is just a small vid — 1 minute 23 seconds. Have a watch — here it is:

We popped by the Acision stand at Mobile World Congress to find out what was going on and I asked Hannah if she’d mind doing a quick chat on camera. It wasn’t planned — but ever the professional, she consented and then competently batted my questions into touch. Nice one Hannah. Watch as I fire question after question at her and she handles them all brilliantly. What is Acision, how do you pronounce it, what phone, what network, do you text, do take pictures with your handset? Do you send them via MMS?

We’ll also be bringing you a longer video featuring the CTO of Acision — probably next week depending on editorial schedules.

Here’s the vid of Hannah:

If you’re into mobile video or mobile video transcoding, I think you’ll find them an interesting company to take a look at. And top marks to whoever came up with the name, Rubberduck Media Lab. It’s one that you won’t forget in a hurry!

Here’s the video:

If you’re a content provider selling, say, a video or a music track via mobile at a cost of £3 — that’s not usually the final cost paid by the user. Data isn’t typically included. So you might end up having to pay £3 to the content provider — and then something stupid like £10 or more — to download the actual content.

Ridiculous and hugely, hugely problematic when you’re trying to encourage the market and prevent user bill shock. Well, mBlox have worked out a model whereby you, as a content provider, can pay for the data downloads of your customers (at, one imagines, a decently advantageous rate) so that the price you advertise your content for is the price the user pays. Rather smart.

Anyway. Over to Andrew to explain.

Find our more about Sender Pays here.

In today’s show we bring you Mobile Industry Review reader Kip Hakes — a huge user of content gateway service, ShoZu — and his other half, Lorraine, who has never used the service, until today. Will she end the video a ShoZu convert?

If you’d like to tell us your ShoZu thoughts and experiences on camera, drop me a note to ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.  We usually film in London on Fridays.

This week, we’ve turned Google.

And courtesy of T-Mobile UK’s branding of their launch event, we’ve — generally — gone pink, too. Yes indeed, last week we were at T-Mobile’s Winter launch, checking out what’s coming for the all-important Christmas period.

The Nokia N96, the LG Renoir, the E71, one of the top Samsungs, as well as T-Mobile’s own USB Mobile Broadband WiFi Hub (that got Dan Lane very hot under the collar. Despite already having a WiFi router at home with USB broadband stick support, I think he wants one!)

Of course, the T-Mobile Google handset, the G1, manufactured by HTC, is the biggie. For that reason we’ve dedicated most of the show to that. Indeed, we bring you the entire walk-through by T-Mobile’s Richard W. Richard was the event’s assigned G1 expert and he showed us a lot of the device features — we’ve brought you that unedited and direct — almost 10 minutes of it.

What does Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian think of the G1? We bring you his view during the episode. (In fact we’ve got a supplemental show coming this week featuring Mr Blandford in more detail on the G1.)

T-Mobile UK’s Winter launch was also a good opportunity to do some normob (relatively) walk-abouts as we haven’t had the opportunity to do many of those recently. Dan Lane takes the camera — as is right and proper — and follows James Whatley on a tour around the room.

* James takes us on a quick introduction to the event ( 00:58 )

* Rafe Blandford on the G1 ( 02:08 )

* Normob Tour ( 04:00 )

* Ben Smith & Dan Lane walk around each stand at the event ( 08:12 )

* We talk to Will McInnes on his views representing T-Mobile and the new G1 ( 09:52 )

* Richard Warmsley of T-Mobile gives us the ‘official’ T-Mobile G1 walk-through (unedited) ( 12:47 )

* The MIR Show team give their view of the G1 ( 29:13 )

* An finally, we have Ben’s facts ( 33:01 )

A bumper show this week — 35:02 minutes.

We’ll be dedicating a heck of a lot of this Monday’s Show to the T-Mobile UK Winter Preview — with a big focus on the G1 Android handset due to hit UK Stores in November.

This week we’re in London, we’re in Beijing (twice) and we’re in San Francisco checking out Swype. Plus we’ve an interview with Jote Bassi of Anam, we talk about Nokia’s N85 and N79 handsets — and we’ve some cameos from other mobile geniuses (notably Phoneboy and Stefan Constantinescu).

Topics discussed:
1 ) This week: More from Beijing & CTIA Fall 2008 ( 00:44 )
2 ) Ben at The Summer Palace, Beijing ( 00:46 )
- Testing the Overboard Waterproof Cases ( 01:36 )
- Sim4Travel Roaming SIM ( 03:29 )
- ScanSafe Anywhere+ ( 04:04 )
- Lonely Planet iPhone Application ( 05:00 )
3 ) Nokia’s new handsets, The N85 and the N79 ( 07:10 )
4 ) Jote Bassi, VP Sales and Marketing of ANAM ( 12:52 )
5 ) We’ll be at the Future of Mobile Conference in London ( 18:04 )
6 ) Get your tickets right now! www.future-of-mobile.com ( 18:21 )
7 ) Ben at The Great Wall, near Beijing ( 18:29 )
- MacBook Air ( 19:00 )
- Jabra BT8030 Headset ( 19:10 )
- Jabra BT2050 Headset ( 20:31 )
- Flip Ultra, 2GB ( 21:35 )
- Creative Vado ( 22:38 )
- Spot Messenger ( 22:50 )
- Portable USB Li-ion Battery ( 24:21 )
8 ) Cliff Kushler, Founder and CTO of Swype: the next T9 for text entry on any screen ( 25:50 )

Our technical contributor, Dan Lane, anchors the show from his office in London while everyone else was out gallivanting across the globe.

Watch out for:
- Ben Smith live from sticky Beijing
- CTIA interviews with an array of companies including Sonicboom, Trutap, GeoSpot, DeviceAnywhere and Nokia

Topics discussed:
1) Ben’s in Beijing (00:46)
2) CTIA (05:40)
a) ShowStoppers Event Tuesday Evening, CTIA (06:09)
b) DeviceAnywhere: iPhone 3G now available (06:22) : Leila Modarres, Director of Marketing, DeviceAnywhere (06:33)
c) Cascada Mobile (07:46) : Alan Lysne, CEO of Cascada Mobile (07:50)
d) GeoSpot (12:32) : Joe Chen, Founding CEO of GeoSpot.com (12:36)
e) Quick chat with Carl from Trutap (17:02)
f) Bena Roberts, President of Vicinity Mobile and Owner of GoMoNews.com (17:57)
g) David Danon, CEO of Sonicboom.com (20:27)
h) Jeb of TopMobile20.com checks in! (23:09)
i) Mark, top chap at Nokia North America (23:46)

Across this week we’ll be publishing extended interviews with each of the CEOs and Marketing Executives we interviewed. Standby for that!

CTIA September 2008 Coverage Preview from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

And we’ll be there, with bells on. Unfortunately there’s no filming allowed — so we can’t produce a MIR Show from the event — but we’re allowed cameras. So expect some news next week plus a segment in the following week’s MIR Show about it.

Matthew has pointed the camera at himself and filmed the following lines:

- “You’re watching Mobile Industry Review, not SMS Text News”
- “And now for something totally different”
- “Fascinating!”

We’re going to integrate Matthew into the upcoming Mobile Industry Review shows.

I’d like to feature other readers so if you have a camera nearby, record some sentences as Matthew has done — and we’ll put you into the show. Feel free to put a little promo in for your site or company.

The full joy will be comin’atcha on Monday — but until then, here’s a one minute preview.  A trailer, if you like!

Sony Ericsson Party – Preview from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

The MIR Show team — Dan Lane, Ben Smith and James Whatley — will be there in force to produce next week’s show.

As far as content goes, I’m thinking normob-walk-about. I think we might be able to get an interview with their Marketing Director. We shall find out.

I’m wondering if there will be any Sony Ericsson handsets that we can put into a competition. You never know. Or maybe some pens!

If you’ve any requests, questions or ideas for what we should film/do at the Sony Ericsson party (aside from trying to keep James Whatley from shoving his N95 8Gb in peoples’ faces), let us know?

This week we’re bringing you an absolute WHOPPER of a show. A veritable whopper.

1. We’re committed to bringing you our show from different, unusual and picturesque locations around London. I think we’ve beaten everything so far by filming from the Tower of London. Special thanks to Tim at the Historic Royal Palaces publicity department. As you might imagine, with almost 1,000 years of history to play with, Ben had a field day with his facts segment. ( 00:47 )

2. We take a look at the 3 Skypephone S2. ( 02:19 )

3. We’ve got lots of news and commentary on last week’s happenings. ( 05:15 )

Lastminute Labs, Google Gears ( 05:16 ), Orange hiring iPhone-fans ( 08:40 ), Nokia Maps

( 09:16 )/Lonely Planet ( 09:37 ), Blackberry Bold’s browser issues ( 10:26 ), IKEA MVNO ( 11:51 ).

4. James Body of Truphone makes an appearance. ( 07:03 )

5. Review of Etymotics Headphones. ( 13:47 )

6. Mobile Industry Review website news… including quick overviews of our upcoming jobs section. Plus: We’ll be at the Future of Mobile conference coming up soon. ( 17:20 )

7. Future of Mobile Conference.  ( 18:58 )

8. Special Sony Ericsson News.  Very special stuff. ( 19:18 )

9. The first EVER Whatley Goes Wild segment.  Including a special N95 8GB-protective-strap.           ( 19:40 )

10. We announce the winners of our competitions.  ( 22:48 )

11. Dan get’s his present. There’s almost a tear shed…( 24:37 )

12. James talks about the Nokia N78.  ( 25:36 )

Video Feeds:

- 3GP mobile video feed
- Downloadable video feed (roughly 190mb)

We’ve been getting super feedback about the changing locations for the filming of the Mobile Industry Review show. This week we chose the Tower of London. I didn’t expect that we’d be able to film *inside* the Tower itself. As you may have seen on previous posts, Tim from Historic Royal Palaces (the organisation that supervises the Tower) asked me to give him a call. I’m pleased to say we came to an arrangement that resulted in the production crew arriving at 5.30pm at the Middle Gate of the Tower to begin shooting.

The original tower — the White Tower (shown above in a photo by James) — was built a few years after William The Conqueror took posession of the country in 1066.  Construction began in 1078 to help solidify the Normans’ base of power — and it’s prominent position at the mouth of the Thames where old London began made it a perfect defensive keep.  930 years ago.  The majority of the walls and other related buildings were added later on — if you take a walk around you’ll see the various dates displayed (e.g. 1200 and beyond).  Fantastic and visually arresting.

It’s always fun visiting the Tower with tourists.  The sight is jaw dropping.  Especially when you consider folk were going about their business here almost a millennium ago.  £16.50 for adults and just under a tenner for children.  Excellent value.  You can definitely spend a whole day — or a long afternoon — exploring the place.

Tim took us down to the moat to do our video introduction.  You’ll see the team standing before the Tower’s outer wall, on some rather well manicured grass.  That’s where the moat was originally.  This year the team at the Tower are demonstrating the status of the Tower as one of Europe’s best Fortresses with a series of events.  Right now — and until September — if you pop down to the Tower at 12.30pm and 2.30pm, you’ll see some siege engines being demonstrated.

We actually filmed next to the mini-Trebuchet (a ‘Perrier’) and next to the ‘Springald’.  Although we weren’t allowed to shoot some RAZRs off the Perrier.  That could have been fun. 

After the intros, we headed into the Tower and shot a few pieces.  Look out for James’ mobile handset interview with a rather iron-faced guard on duty.  Then it was down to the Wharf beside the Thames just outside the Tower for the main features of the show.

Thanks to Tim and his colleagues for facilitating the visit.  If you’re heading to London, do not pass Go.  Go straight to the Tower.  And remember, the Tower gets no financing from the Government or local authorities.  It’s all maintained through donations and ticket sales.   So buy a few.   I’m going to talk to their events team and see if we can hold an Unlimited Drinks there.

We’ll have the Tower episode up on Monday morning. Standby!