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Posts Tagged ‘Mobile Development’

Mark Curtis of Flirtomatic: Don’t forget the mobile web

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

I popped by the Flirtomatic London offices today to meet with founder Mark Curtis and the team. I’ve long been a follower (and fan) of Flirtomatic (check out the MIR archive coverage) and particularly fascinated with how they’ve managed to build such a massive base of users via the mobile web.

Flirtomatic is, as you might have guessed, all about flirting — not necessarily dating in the traditional sense. Mark and his team are uber-smart. They’ve got the sign-up time down to approximately 45 seconds via mobile. So if you click on an advert or if you visit via an operator portal link, you’ll be able to become a member extremely quickly. This fastidious and razor-sharp focus on the sign-up process has helped them garner a massive, massive user-base.

Mark was telling me that when they started, they used to convert just over a third of sign-ups into active users (and by active, they mean ’sends a flirt message’, not just logging in). They’ve now got that ratio up to 70% – a simply phenomenal figure.

I spent a few hours with Mark discussing his take on mobile development. The resulting interview is fantastic food for thought. Firtomatic have built a solid foundation of decent, healthy and increasing revenue through mobile web. Why? Well, he explains in some detail on camera and makes some super observations.

If you’re after some highlights, try these snippets for size:

* They users bought 14,000 virtual engagement rings in 72 hours to celebrate the leap year back in 2008.
* Don’t write off credit cards as a method of payment. 10% of Flirtomatic’s revenue is derived from credit cards — details of which are input via the mobile browser!
* Vodafone UK’s ‘free data’ day on May 1st for PAYG users boosted sign-ups 13 times.
* iPhone users are by far the longest to validate (i.e. confirm) their accounts — in some cases it takes four days for a user to login to their email to validate their account.
* The N95 remains one of their most popular handsets by traffic.
* On average within 2 hours of signing up, males get roughly 4 flirtomatic messages from other users. Females get about 20!
* They money is in visibility (i.e. users paying to improve their rankings/ratings). That point is probably one of the most incisive takeaways.
* It’s not necessarily about apps. I think a lot of developers will be very interested to understand why Mark and his team simply haven’t bothered with mobile applications as yet.

We also did a walk-about of Flirtomatic’s Towers, indeed they’re now a proper tower since new additions have led them to expand on to a second floor. Mark did a quick introduction to the staff before we sat down and got talking.

Mark’s video(s) should be up shortly. If you’d like a reminder, we’ve got a nifty function that will update you by email every time we post. Subscribe here.

(That screencap above of Mark is from the video import.)

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

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Posted in Applications, Hot, LG, Mobile, Mobile Applications, Mobile Development, MobileDeveloperTV, News, Vodafone, iPhone | Comments

Mobile Developer TV is heading to Paris

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

We haven’t launched officially yet (where ‘official’ = deciding on a logo, implementing the theme) but the diary is already choc-a-bloc here at Mobile Developer TV.

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

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Posted in Applications, Hot, Mobile, Mobile Development, MobileDeveloperTV, Twitter, ewan, iPhone, nokia | Comments

Help: Is this a mobile developer FAIL?

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

Whilst we get busy with the new design and arranging of developer interviews, I need your assistance on this conundrum. I’m not sure whether it’s a complete ‘FAIL’ (as the phrase goes) on the part of the developer, or whether it’s just-one-of-those-things.

I’ve been using my Android G1 a lot since I arrived in America because, conveniently, my US T-Mobile sim works perfectly with it (even though it’s a UK device). I didn’t have to do any configuration since HTC thoughtfully included the T-Mobile US web settings on the device already.

So I’ve been taking pictures.

As you do in a city as nice and as varied as San Francisco.

I’d like to send them directly to Flickr. Since there’s no ShoZu service on Android at the moment (and I haven’t re-installed Pixelpipe yet) I thought I’d have a look around the Marketplace on Android.

Unlike others, I take it upon myself to buy as many applications as possible. I did a certain amount of evaluation on ‘Flickr Upload’ when I came across it. From memory it was $0.99. Or perhaps less.

I scrolled down to the comments.

On the 28th of April, ‘Matthew’ commented:

Works wonderfully. Well integrated.

.. and he gave it five stars.

I suspect Matthew is referring to the share option. When you take a photo on Android, there’s a button that pops up called ‘Share’. Click on that and you get the choice of sharing by Email, by Google Mail or — to Flickr (enabled by this application). Smart. I was warming to the concept.

I noted that it’s had between 100-500 downloads. Ok. Not a brilliant well-trodden path. I continued with the comment review.

On the 21st of April, ‘z0mbix’ commented:

Will not authorise with flickr on t-mobile/G1. Can’t get any reply from the developers em[ail]…

Er.

I’d gone off it right away.

The final comment on the app’s frontpage was a day before z0mbix’s one from Benjamin:

Exactly what I was looking for works perfectly

Hmmm.

Z0mbix’s comment put me right off. But I reasoned there must be a reason, maybe he/she didn’t know what they were doing? Afterall if Benjamin and Matthew each had a good experience, I should be ok?

Right?

As I walked out of the Westfield Mall in downtown San Francisco I spotted an advert I wanted to write about. I decided to download Flickr Upload there and then, configure it and get moving.

I paid the money, the app downloaded and within seconds I’d got to the main prompt, asking me to authorise my Flickr account to work with it. Fair enough.

I typed in my Yahoo account username and password and hit ‘login’.

Nothing happened.

Nothing.

The screen went blank.

Er.

‘I’ve just paid a dollar for this,’ I thought, rather disappointed. I was experiencing the pain of fellow user, z0mbix.

I tried again. Maybe I typed my details wrong?

Again it failed. The app just sat on a blank screen like this:

Rubbish!

I ended up sending the photo to my email account and walked home, rather annoyed with myself.

I was annoyed because I thought I’d obviously got my Yahoo password wrong.

What self respecting developer would allow an application to go live — a chargeable application at that — which doesn’t actually work?

Then I reasoned that it must be a Yahoo screw-up and spent a good few blocks cursing them in my mind.

I got back to my desktop and immediately changed my Yahoo password to check I had it correct.

Again I tried authorising the app.

Nothing. Nada.

I’ve bought a dud.

I don’t know who is responsible. It COULD be Yahoo, entirely. But one assumes that the two other recent commenters on Android Marketplace aren’t lying and they got it to work.

I’ve tried a few times over the past few days to activate it to no avail.

So I looked up the developer online.

They’re called Macrospecs and they’re a privately-owned startup in the bay area.

Ah hah! They’ll have a GetSatisfaction page, right? Or a forum or something?

No.

Nothing!

It’s a one-page website and — ultra annoyingly — the ‘contact’ page goes straight through to their email address.

Confusingly there is absolutely no reference to the Flickr Upload application on their site.

I then had a look back on the Android Marketplace and saw that the ‘developer site’ is listed as FaceofMobile.com/Flickr. Ah hah!

No, hold your excitement.

This is the entire site:

Yup… it’s one page. It consists of three screenshots and a macrospecs logo, with no link. No contact details. No support option. Nothing.

In fairness to the developer, one wouldn’t expect that many support enquiries from an application that simply sends a photo to a Flickr account. It’s not rocket science and there’s hardly any failure points.

Except the authorisation process.

And, of course, macrospecs don’t control that, Yahoo do.

Tough luck for me and z0mbix, right? If it ain’t working, you can try contacting macrospecs but it’s rather clear they don’t want to know — and are not expecting to support any enquiries.

I hunted around and I found a support forum for macrospecs’ Face of Mobile application, a $1.99 Windows Mobile Facebook app.

I suppose I could try posting there.

But I’m not feeling very welcome — or smart for buying the app. Indeed I’ve paid a dollar for the privilege.

It’s perfectly fine for it to happen to me, I have a good understanding of the trials and tribulations of mobile development — but if this is the experience of your average consumer who’s just picked up a G1 or G2 and is expecting 100% friction-free total quality-assured service from the Android Marketplace, they’re not going to be at all impressed.

Like the ringtone marketplace a few years ago — you’ll pay once and if the experience sucks, you definitely won’t ever pay again.

What’s the right response?

Is this a FAIL on the part of the team at macrospecs? Is it a Yahoo FAIL?

Or is it an Android FAIL?

Would this have happened on an iPhone?

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

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Posted in Annoying, Applications, Google, Hot, Mobile, Mobile Development, MobileDeveloperTV, Satisfaction, T-Mobile, Three, iPhone, marketplace, shozu | Comments

Welcome to Mobile Developer TV!

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Hello and welcome to Mobile Developer TV.

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

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

Here’s the Background

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

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

Why Mobile Developer TV?

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

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

The Aim

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

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

I’m interested in talking to and profiling:

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

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

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

Can I profile you?  Contact Me!

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

+44 7769 658104 (UK)

+1 415 200 9515 (US)

… (I’m happy to hear from PRs too.)

Don’t Be British

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

Got News?

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

Design

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

Editorial Policy

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

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

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

Standby!

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

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Posted in Applications, Contributors, Feature, Mobile, Mobile Applications, Mobile Development, MobileDeveloperTV, News, Operators, Opinion, People, Research, Twitter, ewan, iPhone, marketplace, mirshow, nokia, samsung | Comments

SMS Text News launches DeviceAnywhere Developer Roadshow

Friday, June 20th, 2008

I first met the Chief Executive and Chief Marketing Officer of DeviceAnywhere (formerly known as MobileComplete) in a briefing late last year. I’d heard of the company quite a few times. It’s a name that comes up regularly whenever I’m talking to developers. At the briefing, I had a chance to check out the DeviceAnywhere service in detail and it blew my socks off.

If you’ve come across DeviceAnywhere before, then, you know what I’m talking about and can nod sagely with me.

If you haven’t, then just wait ’til you see it. It’s pure genius.

When I arrived at the briefing, I saw, on the table, a pizza-box-sized server — one of those that you’re used to seeing in a rack, in a data centre. Although this wasn’t just any 1U server. No, sir. There was a Blackberry inside it. Literally. I could see the Blackberry’s screen flashing away — the phone had been disassembled a little and plugged into the circuitry of the server. As though The Borg had interfaced with it.

I nodded to the DeviceAnywhere chaps, “So, you can actually control that?” I said, pointing to the Blackberry screen, “From here?” I said, pointing to the laptop they’d setup next to it.

“Yup!”

Wow. The implications of such a facility hit home immediately. If you’re a developer and you’d like immediate access to a Blackberry, a Nokia, an iPhone… I am not talking simulation or emulation — in fact, a whole range of mobile handsets (500+), working on veritable array of international networks, you can have it remotely over the internet. One or two clicks with the Mobile Complete client software and within seconds, you’re using a real device on, a live network of choice.

Want to upload an application? Go ahead. Want to send a text message? Sure. Go for it. Each phone has it’s own account on a mobile network (you pick what you want, e.g. Blackberry on Vodafone) and you can rent the phone exclusively or for a few hours to test with. You can do absolutely anything you want to the device — when your testing/tinkering session is finished, it’ll be reset to factory default. What’s more, the pricing is eminently affordable, whether you’re developing in your bedroom or a multi-national.

They don’t just offer easy access to a whole range of mobile devices — they also offer automation, scripting and monitoring: Absolutely invaluable for most developers. Just as an example, if you’re working away testing an application on a device and it freezes, well… not only is it a bit of an arse, you also want to know *what happened* to cause the freeze, e.g. a memory overload or the like. That’s where DeviceAnywhere really comes into its own. Plus, the automation tools can save you hours and hours of time — think, for example, trying to test out performance at peak network congestion times in different time zones (when you actually want to be asleep).

It’s a really, really useful offering, DeviceAnywhere. It’s exactly what developers need when they’re developing for international markets (and, let’s face it, if you’re not, there’s a problem). It’s all very well having a Sony handset on each domestic mobile network. That’s useful. But when you get an enquiry from someone using a Nokia N95 8GB wondering why your service isn’t working, device-specific bugs can be a real annoyance.

Clearly, anyone who’s doing any sort of mobile development or marketing needs access to DeviceAnywhere.

Which is why, when I talked to DeviceAnywhere again recently, I suggested they support a Mobile Complete roadshow here at SMS Text News. I was delighted when they readily agreed.

So where’s what we’re going to do. I’d like to spread the word about the service. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to four different mobile developers in the UK — large and small. We’re going to their offices (or, in some cases, they’ll be coming to SMS Text News towers) and we’re going to give them a demo DeviceAnywhere account and see what they make of the service. We’ll write each company up and do some videos too.

Standby! The first roadshow entry will be online shortly!

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