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Also: check out Tomi Ahonen’s opinion on the deployment of PocketCop.

Some of the questions I asked him:

* What was his first mobile phone?
* How did he get interested in Symbian? (There were some broken bones involved)
* Why do you like the community-led approach of open systems?
* Just how frustrating does he find it when the uninformed ask, ‘Is Nokia/Symbian dead?‘
* Who won the Smartphone wars?

I thoroughly recommend taking a bit of time to watch.

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If you’d like to get a feed of all our videos, you can subscribe to our channel on Youtube, or you can subscribe to get updates via the dedicated podcast channel on iTunes (iTunes Podcast subscription link, free obviously!).

Android, as Lee put it, exists to serve Google’s specific interests. Lee goes on to point out that as Symbian is entirely open (“Andy Rubin and others from Google can come sit on our councils, they can come check in code”) and believes this will make all the difference to the Symbian platform’s development over time.

Have a watch of the video and see what you think:

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Every now and then, an iPhone application hits the marketplace and causes an absolute stir.

Gym Babes is one of them.

It is, quite simply, one of the most innovative concepts I’ve ever seen.

It’s patently useless.

It won’t tell you the time in Tokyo.

It won’t find your last train home.

It won’t pay the London Congestion Charge automatically according to your location.

It won’t let you book a hotel room.

It won’t enable you to converse with a Mongolian Monk about the next moon cycle.

But.

And there is a but!

It will let you watch a choice of two reasonably attractive women running on a treadmill, formatted in glorious iPhone format.

What’s more you get a choice of whether you’d like to see the lady run, walk or ‘slow-mo’.

And there is, of course, some fairly dodgy — yet highly appropriate — accompanying music.

Why is this good? Why is this the pinnacle?

Well, the concept. It’s simply marvelous. How simple can you get? Run the application, select a girl (there’s a choice of two at the moment) and you see a perfectly formatted close-up portrait video of that girl running, along with the dodgy music. It does what it says on the tin.

Then there’s the innovation. Somebody at Vertex, the developers, came up with the concept. They got out their cash, hired some developers, took the time to film the movies in high quality and format them correctly for the iPhone experience, and they sent the app out to the marketplace. I love what this says about entrepreneurial possibilities in the iPhone App Era.

It was so simple for them that I bet they were able to create the whole thing, including videos, for a few thousand dollars.

The barriers to entry are so low that this concept was able to be turned from idea to reality.

I also really, really like the fact that this does not exist for the Nokia Ovi Store. I like this, because it’s a constant and continual reminder of just how far the Ovi Store and Symbian platform has to go.

Why did Vertex, the company behind the app, create it for the iPhone? The process was simple, assured (although getting through the Apple censors must have been a bit of fun) and there’s fiscal reward.

I’m sure I actually *bought* Gym Babes. But it’s actually free now. I think that’s because we should shortly expect the ability to ‘access’ other models with some in-app payments.

And finally, it’s got to be the best, best value application — on the planet — for showing to your mates in the pub. Males will burst out laughing and draw nearer. Females will, I suspect, take one look at the screen and think, ‘heh, ruuubbbbish,’ but, I hope, value the concept. (For it can’t be long before the author of Gym Babes releases Gym Boys featuring some hot Latin chappies pounding away. (On the running machine)

Some will comment that this application adds next to no value to the mobile experience. I disagree. It’s all about the innovation and the complete lack of barriers to entry. The fact that somebody was able to envision the concept, get it programmed and get it into the store speaks volumes about the market position of the iPhone platform. It’s so straight-forward, so predictable, that people are now able to concentrate on delivering entertainment applications like Gym Babes.

Years ago this simply wasn’t possible. It’s was just too difficult to deliver the Gym Babes experience *easily* (without a degree in Nuclear Physics) on many of the mobile platforms of yesteryear.

The fact that we’re able to see — in a Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs viewpoint — silly, semi-pointless and hilarious services like Gym Babes hit the marketplace can only be a good thing. Pitched correctly, I think the developers of Gym Babes can make a ton of money. Some males will take a heck of a lot of private value from oggling the Gym Babes girls. You only need to look at the continued success of Page 3 semi-naked girls in the United Kingdom to see there’s a ton of demand for soft-porn. Gym Babes is light-as-a-feather. Apple wouldn’t have carried it otherwise. I think the vast majority of users — at least initially — will be like me. Downloading it to show off to people, to get a reaction.

My favourite thing to do with Gym Babes at the moment is to stand in a crowd of mobile geeks and declare, loudly, “I’ll show you why Nokia Ovi Store is going nowhere.”

(That definitely gets attention in the UK, anyway, there are still Nokia fans here)

I then produce my iPhone to the expectant crowd and fire up Gym Babes.

The fact Gym Babes isn’t on the Ovi Store speaks volumes, *VOLUMES*, about how utterly inaccessible (and sadly, how irrelevant) the Symbian development platform is to most developers.

We’ll know the Ovi Store has arrived when we start seeing applications of this quality and this limited feature-set appear and start generating revenues for it’s owners. I think, unfortunately, it’s going to be a long, long time before anyone creates this kind of experience for Symbian.

Meantime, if you’ve got an iPhone, you need to have Gym Babes on it. So you can show it to people.

Here’s the direct iTunes link: Gym Babes

Now, enjoy Episode 35.

Rafe, founder of All About Symbian, knows a thing or two about Symbian. He’s got so much knowledge and experience about the operating system, about Nokia and about the industry in general that it’s not unusual to see various high-ranking Nokia employees bending his ear as he walks around conferences.

I always find Rafe’s insight fascinating — the more so for the launch of the Nokia N97 Mini and the new X6 ‘comes with music’ device. Have a watch.

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While most sensible folk were staying inside or heading home, I was doing the opposite, trudging along Millbank to get to Altitude on the 29th floor of the Millbank Tower.

This was for the Orange/Motorola Motoblur & DEXT event. I arrived to find the pre-launch in full swing. I dodged out the way of Leila from TelecomTV was recording a spot to (their very big) camera and spotted SlashGear’s Chris Davies sat in the corner with a glass of champagne, waiting for the magic to begin.

As I walked over to see Chris I was offered a glass of champagne by a waiter. No, actually, I think it was a flute. A flute of champagne. Not a glass.

It’s not all bad, these press launches.

As we waited for the ‘launch’ bit to begin, Chris and I compared notes. He was first in line for the Motorola StarTac handset when it came out, years ago. Me too. I remember it costing 550 pounds. Likewise with the first generation RAZR, we were there. So both Motorola fans back in the day, but to confess to even thinking about using a Motorola as your primary communications device in this day and age is a sure way of getting yourself carted off to the looney bin by the Mobile Industry Review Phone Police.

It’s not that Motorola devices aren’t cool. It’s the fact that you can do almost nothing with a bog standard MOTO-something device. And the user interface… uggggghhhhhhh. Total bollocks.

Recent Windows Mobile Motorola devices have been utter shit, too. I stupidly bought a Motorola Q9C using Windows Mobile. Very stupid. I did a video demonstrating just how pants the experience was. The software routinely disconnected itself from the hardware. I’m not sure who to blame as I’m no fan of Windows Mobile when it’s playing up. But the device was manufactured by Moto.

So I have been deeply unimpressed with Motorola for some time.

But I’ve been looking forward to seeing the next generation. They’ve obviously taken a step back and refocused — and putting Android at the heart of their new operation is a super move. This becomes apparent when you watch Motorola people demonstrating their new devices. Because their default answer is now ‘yes’ — they don’t have to worry about the small but important stuff that users care about. Service augmentation is now left to the burgeoning market of Android developers.

Right then. To the Motorola DEXT (or the ‘CLIQ’ as it’s known in the States).

I had hands-on last night and I’m impressed. I liked the solid build. The QWERTY keyboard is good — I think that with a bit of acclimatisation I could get very fast with it. It’s a heck of a lot better than HTC’s T-Mobile G1 keyboard that has that great big lump or ‘lip’ on the left. The 5 megapixel autofocus camera is very encouraging — although I didn’t get the opportunity to properly try it out. I’m working on the (slightly incorrect but more or less reliable) method of assuming that, in the case of the DEXT, 5 megapixels is better than the equivalent 3.2 megapixels you’d ordinarily find on such a device.

But you know what, you don’t want to know the rest of the specifications, do you? Not even the Orange Newsroom post bothers to tell you the exact specifics. Because it doesn’t really matter any more. It’s getting very, very to distinguish between devices. A few years ago it was critical to weigh the advantages and disadvantages between devices very carefully. Just like it was when you were buying a laptop or PC years ago. I can see we’re getting to the point that it almost doesn’t matter *what* QWERTY Android handset you buy.

It will probably be quad-band. Probably have a half decent camera. Probably have a decent touchscreen, battery, form factor…

Which is why Motorola have decided to distinguish themselves — like HTC — with a user interface layer of sorts. Whilst HTC have their gorgeous ‘Sense’ layer sitting on top of the familiar Android UI, Motorola have MOTOBLUR.

And MOTOBLUR is actually pretty sexy. As the chap took me through the demonstration (the video is below) I got more and more impressed. I could see myself using it heavily.

MOTOBLUR does away with individual apps (like the address book — although the default Android one is still available as you’d expect) and instead delivers a unified ‘social media address book’. Here’s the explanation:

MOTOBLUR keeps track of all your contacts so it’s easy to keep up. Contacts are automatically synced to the phone from personal and work email as well as social network accounts, and MOTOBLUR updates any changes friends or contacts make to their info so you don’t have to. When making or receiving a phone call, friend’s latest profile picture and status is shown on the screen. In contacts view, see your communication history with each person and their latest social network broadcasts organized in an easy to read manner so you’ll always know that latest info about friends and family. Plus, communicate with them anyway you like, all right from their contact information.

I really like this. I’ll need to check it out and see how it performs.

Through a series of widgets on the home screen(s) you can use the access the following MOTOBLUR features:

* Happenings: View all your social site updates in one spot with the live Happenings application. Every friend feed, status update, wall post, bulletin and photo upload is automatically delivered and ready for immediate reply, anyway you like

* Messages: Quickly scroll through the Messages application for a snapshot of current work or personal emails, social site messages, and texts, with the ability to respond to any message however you want no matter how it was sent: text, email, IM and more.

* Social Status: Blast your status right from the home screen and even save time by updating your status to one or all your social networks at once

* News Feeds: Keep track of your favorite news feeds, sports scores or even celeb gossip without leaving the homescreen

* Calendar: Integrate work calendar with GCalendar into one widget that shows the next appointment right from the home screen

Again, this is becoming very, very compelling.

I’m particularly impressed with this backup offering:

MOTOBLUR is easy to set up and secure, so there is no need to worry about misplacing the phone. All contacts, log-in information, home screen customizations, email and social network messages are backed-up on the MOTOBLUR secure server. Lost or stolen phones can be found with integrated GPS from the online owner’s portal, and data can even be wiped clean. Users can simply enter the account username and password on their next MOTOBLUR phone, and all the information will be ready and waiting.

Really, really cool. I like this A LOT. It’s a total arse when you swap, change or lose your device because the familiarity that you’ve built up over months (or sometimes years) is lost in an instant. All of a sudden you have to try and find the inbox icon or add in a favourite bookmark again. Even if you’re using an Android device from another manufacturer — which has some of the best synchronisation on the planet for contacts, calendar and email — you don’t get your home screen customisations backed up, ready to access at a moment’s notice.

The remote locate and wipe functions are smart — I like the fact that these kind of offerings were previously reserved for the very top of the range devices. But Motorola has made it available for the masses.

And I think the masses will like it. The DEXT is free on contract. It’s a 24-month contract, mind. That’ll get a few consumers panicking briefly before agreeing. At £34.26 per month, you’ll get 900 any network minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited data. Plus Orange Maps (sat nav style) are included too.

The masses — the Facebook masses — are going to love it. There are legions of Orange UK customers out there who have, for too long, been subjected to a poor range of rubbishy phones. Orange is most definitely ‘back’ with this offering — and so is Motorola.

I’m excited to see how consumers react. I think the time is right. I’m picturing a 26 year old female office worker who’s been paying 35 quid a month to Orange for years. She walks into the Orange shop on the hunt for something that will ‘let her do Facebook’. She’s heard of the iPhone but she’s been indoctrinated with the ‘only available on o2′ line and doesn’t want to swap. She doesn’t want to spend any cash on the device up front and is looking for a deal from Orange. She’s heard of Google and would like to do more ‘internetty’ things on her phone. Yup. I reckon she’s going to love the DEXT.

I’ve got two videos for you.

The first is the one I took yesterday evening at the Orange/Motorola event. It’s quite noisy but you will see some of the MOTOBLUR features in use:

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The second video is the official Orange UK overview of the DEXT device by Conor and is definitely worth a look:

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(You can find Part 1 here)

This is part one. Part two follows shortly.

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Rafe Blandford, founder and editor of All About Symbian, on this week’s Nokia World 2009.

o2 — usually connected with the iPhone when you’re talking about the UK, is now set to become the official Palm Pre exclusive operator, reports New Media Age.

But not until Christmas.

Even though the Pre is due to hit the United States in 14 days, the British Pre fans are going to have to wait another 6 months. Sorry.

What an arse?
The solution? Fly to San Francisco and pick one up… if you’ve got a spare few thousand dollars.

And it is.

We’re live. And the mobile industry is changed for good.

Finally you can deploy an application, easily, for Nokia customers. It used to be an absolutely torturous process — now, the discovery is much, much improved.

Similarly, if you’d like, for example, some Star Trek wallpapers on your Nokia, you can now click-click and be done. No more arsing around. Fantastic.

Here’s a screenshot from the desktop:

The store is wholly sluggish this morning because the whole world and his dog is checking in, downloading and playing around.

You can already see just how massively successful the store is going to be. I’m looking at a ‘futuristic‘ Star Trek Ringtone — that’s priced free. On the right hand side I’ve got these options:

And it’s free? I’ll have that.

As for billing, well your operator will take care of your purchase processing in Australia, Britain, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Russia, Singapore and Spain. So it’s just one click to buy. Magic from a mobile developer standpoint. I’m going to give it a try in a few minutes.

And for revenue sharing? Well 30% revenue share is fast becoming standard across the app store world and Nokia is keeping to that — there are a few questions over exactly how the splits will work but I’m sure we’ll see some further clarification on this soon.

Here’s what store.ovi.com looks like on my Nokia N82 browser:

I’ll download the app and take you on a tour shortly.

For now… the Ovi Store is live… let’s see what everyone thinks about it!

The address you need: http://store.ovi.com

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.)

For years I’ve been screaming with utter annoyance at the absolute rubbish Sony Ericsson has been vomiting into the marketplace. Their devices are amongst the nicest engineered on the planet. They’re well built, stylish, reliable and the cameras are simply amazing.

But the dumb operating system (or, more accurately, the stupidly limited UI) is — literally — from the 1990s.

I positively loved their K800i handset — a class leading device in it’s time — and I’ve continued to admire the workmanship of their more recent models — but actually using a Sony Ericsson is akin to jumping in an Ashes to Ashes style timewarp back to 1990.

It’s pretty accurate to refer to a Sony Ericsson user as a Mobile Caveman. Just like a human caveman, a Mobile Caveman (”MobCav, anyone?”) is able to manage life’s various transactions (fire, food, sex) but when it comes to anything more enlightened or connected, no dice.

Your Sony handset will browse the ‘mobile web’. Cool. It will — with quite a bit of persuasion — synchronise your address book. You can play music on it. You can even play game(s) on it.

But put a top of the range Sony handset next to other class leaders (iPhone, G1/G2, Palm Pre, Nokia N-Series) and it’s immediately clear it’s not in the same league.

Don’t get me started on developing for a Sony Ericsson.

Besides from a degree in Nuclear Physics (with hons and some fannying about with the Dean’s List), you’ll need a massive budget and the patience of a demigod to develop for the current range of Sony Ericssons.

The Xperia device is … well, let’s put it this way, have you seen anyone with an Xperia recently? Hobbled by a ridiculous, ridiculous Microsoft bollocks operating system, the Xperia was never, ever going anywhere.

“Why won’t they go Android?” I used to scream, “Can you imagine how brilliant a Sony Ericsson would be with Android?”

Well… it’s happening.

Finally.

It had to happen. It was inevitable. Just like Apple bringing out an iPhone (they had to make the move or surrender the mobile music market to the likes of Nokia).

Slashphone reports that at a recent showcase in Taiwan, Peter Ang, the Sony Ericsson VP of Marketing, confirmed Android is now a key operating system for the company. Along with Symbian and Windows. Gah.

Sony’s Android handset(s) are due to arrive with Android 2.0 — and there’s speculation (from Chris Davies over at Android Community.com) that the devices will sport a proprietary UI along the lines of the Xperia UI.

The upshot?

Upgrade Android in your estimations. With the consumer giants such as Sony Ericsson (and Samsung) jumping in, it won’t be long before high-end (and shortly after, mid-tier and low-end) normal mobile users (”normobs”) will be shopping for their Apps via the Android Marketplace.

Exciting news.

Here are some quotes right off the press from some mobile developers. (I have removed names).

- “I’d like to know how much of my revenues they’ll demand.”

- “I like the ease of billing and the potential of micro-payments.”

- “I suspect they’ll take 30% just like Apple / Nokia etc. I hope it’s not more than that.”

- “It’s just another App store – we WILL develop for it, obviously, but only because I’m yet to see which store will capture the minds of consumers.”

- “I very much like the concept. Especially if one SDK works across a number of MNOs. That would be really cool.”

- “Is this too good to be true? It sure looks like it.”

- “If they were REALLY thinking of developers, they’d be finding a way to reduce the amount of work we need to do across the various mobile programming languages. Perhaps they are, I can’t quite work it out yet.”

- “Interesting, interesting… that’s all I have to say until you tell us more, Ewan.”

I’m aiming to have more information soon! If you’ve got a comment or opinion, drop me a note — ewan@mobiledeveloper.tv.

(I regularly tap up people for live reaction — if you’d like to be on that list, add me at ewanmacleod@gmail.com on Google Talk or ewanjmacleod on Skype.)

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If you’re a mobile developer — or an internet developer with designs on mobile — today’s news deserves a sit-down analysis and big think by you and your colleagues.

How would you like an entirely managed method of reaching up to 289 million users worldwide via Vodafone’s own ‘app store’ with the billing taken care of?

I’ve put ‘app store’ in inverted commas because, although there isn’t a mention of the term in their official announcement, that’s more or less what it’s promising to be. Or, at least, that’s a quick summary from me.

Vodafone have done a rather good job of the announcement, so instead of re-writing it, here it is:

Vodafone is to stimulate a new generation of mobile internet applications by providing internet service developers with a single point of access to Vodafone’s global customer base.

Developers will only need to create internet applications once in order to reach millions of Vodafone customers on any device and will be able to charge for it directly through Vodafone’s billing system. This will provide internet content partners, such as the media or game developers, with a cost-efficient and effective micro-payments system to reach all customers on mobile devices.

Vodafone will also provide partners and developers with customer controlled access to other network capabilities, such as location awareness, enabling them to create even more innovative mobile internet services and applications.

The move will be accompanied by a framework to provide customers with transparency and control over how their information is accessed and used.

The scale of the initiative will provide partners and developers with an unparalleled opportunity to increase their revenues from the mobile internet, while delivering services to Vodafone’s 289 million customers. Vodafone will also benefit from any uplift in sales under a revenue-share model.

The benefits to third-party developers and internet companies include:

- A single point of access to millions of Vodafone customers across the globe
- Faster time to market for new products and services across several operating systems and handsets
- Enhanced revenue stream opportunities
- Simplified micro-payments for services through the use of Vodafone’s existing billing systems

The benefits to customers include:

- A greater selection of more compelling internet applications and services
- More convenience and greater flexibility in paying for new services
- A simpler and more intuitive mobile internet experience
- Consistent quality of service across the entire Vodafone footprint

Vodafone will enable developers to use its direct billing capabilities to permit customers to pay for services wirelessly through their existing Vodafone pre- and post-paid accounts rather than having to input sensitive credit card data into multiple application stores.

This is expected to give customers a convenient and highly secure payment option for the different services on offer, as well as encourage greater take up.

By giving developers access to location awareness capabilities, Vodafone will enable a new generation of highly personalised user-activated and controlled services and applications that are tailored to meet the customer’s immediate requirements.

Vodafone is making the enhancements through the creation of a set of network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which will enable developers to build capabilities such as direct billing and location awareness into their services.

The APIs, which provide a link between the applications and the Vodafone network capabilities, will work across the entire Vodafone footprint thanks to a new layer of management technology based on Service Oriented Architecture.

Vodafone will start to offer access to selected network enablers through the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) initiative, which is designed to help developers create useful widgets for a combined audience of up to one billion customers (across the four JIL partner networks). JIL is due to release a website and a Software Developer Kit in the summer. Vodafone is also exploring a range of other ways to expose its network enablers to the broadest possible audience.

“Vodafone is making these changes to make it easier for third parties to develop attractive new services as well as bill and support our customers through our network capabilities in all markets,” said Vittorio Colao CEO of Vodafone. “By giving them simple access to our global customer base and network assets, such as direct billing and location awareness, we will help them to make more money while providing our customers with the innovative services that they want.”

I’ve got a lot of questions. This sounds rather good. Especially the join innovation lab concept.

Can they pull it off? And whilst we’re talking about 289 million customers (or, potentially a billion), how realistic is that considering X million of them are currently sporting rubbish Motorola RAZR handsets? What does this mean for Vodafone support of Nokia’s Ovi? What exactly are Vodafone going to have to put on every handset to support this?

Or are we actually talking about a sooped-up set of mobile web pages that, whilst sounding good (especially to nervous shareholders looking for a response to Apple), isn’t actually going to blow any doors off this year, next year, or this decade?

I hope those questions — and more — will be answered initially in today’s 3pm call. I’m also going to see if I can get some interviews on camera soon.

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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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If you’re interested to see what we’re playing with, you can check out the demonstration logos (and weigh in with your comments) at this url.

I used 99designs.com to commission an identity for Mobile Developer TV. I’ve long been fascinated with the concept proposed by 99designs. Here’s how it works; You commit to spending a particular amount of money (say $200). You publish your brief and 99designs take your money. Then designers from all over the world compete for your business by submitting their designs.

Very cool indeed.

We’ve had 66 entries in total so far. You can see which ones I’m favouring at the moment by checking out the star-ratings on each. I’d welcome your perspective!

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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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Mobile Tron is Matthew Bennett’s inaugural mobile event for San Francisco and it’s taking place this Thursday at a rather swish design gallery art space (”Receiver Design”). The Facebook event is here and you’re welcome to come along if you’re into mobile and you’ve got something to say.

I’m taking the camera equipment along so if you’d like to get on camera for Mobile Developer TV (the launch is coming shortly), come along.

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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?

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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