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.

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I didn’t quite understand Eurostar’s timetable and, as a result, I embarked via Ashford International (leaving the car in their car park) and, most annoyingly, found that the return train only stops at Ebsfleet International or Kings Cross. Neither were that convenient for picking up the car again. Arse.

So I got off at Ebsfleet and took a £90 taxi (JOY!) back to Ashford International’s car park. Total arse.

But! There’s a plus. I was able to follow my entire journey from the back of the car with Google Maps on my Nokia N95 8GB, with GPS active. It was almost as good as having a TomTom sat in front of me:

Got a few minutes? Send me your ShoZu Of The Day and I’ll get it up — ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Today’s ShoZu is one of mine. From an hour or so ago:

Yes! I awoke in glorious Billericay to find the place literally covered in snow.

Well, not quite.

We’ve got an inch, perhaps less.

So for all the Americans and Canadians reading — or anyone who lives in an actually SNOWY part of the world, let me deliver you a bit of morning entertainment.

You see, despite there being less than an inch of shitty powdery snow, most of the area is closed. Shut down. Schools will close, offices will shut temporarily, trains will be delayed. We simply can’t handle snow in the United Kingdom, especially not in the suburbs around London where 0.5 inches of snow is comparable to getting a 4ft drop in -10c (without wind chill) conditions in the middle of Tahoe.

We just can’t handle it. Folk are putting on their Wellington Boots as I speak and ‘braving’ the terrible conditions. So terrible that it’s actually reading 1.5c on the thermometer. That’s right, the snow will be gone in a few hours but you can count on the total disruption of the entire region.

Only a few moments ago a van was valiantly battling against the snow to drive up my road. You see those tracks? Those were made by that very van. Such a brave effort. He was slipping and sliding all over the shop in 2nd gear.

We don’t bother with 5th-gear snow-driving nonsense here. Heh. We just point the vehicles in the right direction in 1st gear (WHY ISN’T THE WHEEL GRIPPIN’????) and curse the ‘treacherous’ conditions.

If you’ve got any pictures uploaded to ShoZu of some DECENT snowy conditions outside, please email them in.

This is his very first upload to Flickr via ShoZu. His first. Ever.

And would you believe it was only 53 weeks ago? Just a smidgen over a year ago. Wow.

And what was his first upload?

A Christmas tree!

He snapped it with the now ubiquitous Nokia N95 — but didn’t have the geo-encoding live at that point.

You can find the original here and the Whatley’s full Flickr feed here.

He’s also got a photo map here thanks to ShoZu’s automatic geo-encoding of all his photo uploads.

And, as a bonus, read this How-To on ShoZu authored by the dude himself.

Here it is:

Now.

What handset do you reckon took that one?

N95.

Is the Nokia N95 one of the best mobile camera phones on the planet? I think so. You can see the original photo here.

This is another shot from the collection of MIR reader Mark Thomas. You’ve got a knack of capturing good lookin’ plants, Mark!

You can see Mark’s other submission last week here.

Andy uses ShoZu a lot to snap pictures, get’em up to Flickr, so that his kids can take a look to see what he’s been up to.

The photo below is from Andy’s flickr feed and shows a street in Ottawa. It was apparently -18 Celsius when he arrived on Monday — then the weather warmed up and promptly dumped a ton of snow:

That sort of thing is entirely foreign to us here in the United Kingdom. If we get more than an inch of snow, the country tends to shut down immediately, news teams rush to film stupid motorists who thought their Ford Ka’s would be perfectly fine driving up steep hills, and we all generally do a collective shudder and hope we’ve got enough breakfast cereal in the cupboard.

Goodness knows what we’d do if we were dumped a few feet of snow overnight.

I’ve got some more from Andy — including his first ever upload.

The Ottawa photo was taken with a Motorola Q9h — although that doesn’t get a description from Flickr and I don’t think it can use ShoZu’s geotagging functionality either.

Strange that it’s identified as a ‘Motorola Not Available’. I do think that’s a pretty good monicker for the Q9 series though — my Q9c from the States was more or less permanently unavailable. I’ve got a video to show you later.

Andy, thank you very much for sending this in – most appreciated!

Shazly’s first ever ShoZu upload was to Flickr and was geotagged to Dehlwala, Western Sri Lanka. Very cool indeed.

I suspect, but can’t confirm, that this is Shazly’s young one:

Nice one Shazly! You can see his best ever upload here.

And in case you’re wondering, Shazly’s handset of choice? Nokia N82.

Here it is:

You can see the original here.

That was, believe it or not, taken on a Nokia N95.

Wow.

Very impressive stuff Mark!

- – - – -

As part of the continuing MIR ShoZu Campaign, I’d like to publish your first, best or unique pictures that you’ve uploaded somewhere. Send me a link to Flickr (or the like) to ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Today we’re featuring reader Marino Bresciani’s cat:

An inspired picture, Marino!

If you can think of any LOLCAT phrases for this one, I’d be interested in hearing them.

I’m also hunting for more of the following:

* Your first ever ShoZu picture. What’s the first one you ever uploaded with ShoZu? You should be able to find it in your Flickr or various other gallery services. Send me it with your blog/site link.

* Your best ever picture uploaded by ShoZu.

Mail me on ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

The only stipulations to qualify are:

- You took the photo with a camera phone
- You uploaded it over-the-air with ShoZu to an internet destination (e.g. Flickr, Moblog, Photobucket)

I’ve got an absolute ton that I plan to feature but if you’ve got a photo we should include, I’ll give that priority.

Today’s first ever ShoZu photo is of a shoe. My shoe:

This is highly uninteresting, I realise. Apart from the little timestamp. 28th of March, 2006 at 9:48am. Goodness knows what I was doing at this time taking a photo. And I can’t quite work out what the ground is I’m walking on. Or what the hell I’m actually doing. I might be sat down. I was most definitely testing out ShoZu to see if it worked.

Anyway, the point of this photo is that it’s my first-ever ShoZu uploaded photo. In 3 and a bit months, I will have been using ShoZu for 3 years. And that’s saying something in these ultra-fast connected times.

The phone I was using? A Sony Ericsson W550i. I couldn’t have told you that if I didn’t have Flickr’s meta data to tell me. I was *using* a Sony?

What was the absolute *FIRST* photo you uploaded with ShoZu? Mail it over and we’ll get it up!

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It’s part of a mobile campaign called PhotoID, created for Nike by agency AKQA. Trainers buyers can take a cameraphone snap of “brightly coloured subjects, such as street graffiti or clothing”, MMS it off to Nike and get a message back showing a pair of Nike’s 1985 Dunk high-top customised using the colours in the photo. Anyone who’s really taken with their shoes can then buy the customised footwear.

You can see a video of the service in action over at The Guardian. I’m seriously tempted to give it a go.