Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

Vodafone’s ‘App Store’: Mobile developers respond

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

I just published Vodafone’s news regarding their ‘app store’ initiative — and I’m already getting questions and reaction in from developers.

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

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.

The new Mobile Developer TV logo is coming soon

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

I’ve had a few people ask me why I’ve kept Mobile Developer TV with the default run-of-the-mill Wordpress theme at the moment. The answer is simple — I’m still working out the design. I’ve begun collating some super content and I wanted to get it up and out to the planet whilst I waited for the design to be complete.

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

Heading to MobileTron on Thursday

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
May 7, 2009
6:00 pm to 10:00 pm

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

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.

Ewan MacLeod: “Twitter’s grown 1,689% from February 2008 to February 2009 compared to FB’s 114% growth. Someone’s been eating their Weetabix…” (via FriendFeed)

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Ewan MacLeod “Twitter's grown 1,689% from February 2008 to February 2009 compared to FB's 114% growth. Someone's been eating their Weetabix…” March 17 at 5:22 pm – Comment – Like 'snot doing bad that Twitter – Ewan MacLeod

Read the original here:
Ewan MacLeod: “Twitter’s grown 1,689% from February 2008 to February 2009 compared to FB’s 114% growth. Someone’s been eating their Weetabix…” (via FriendFeed)

Ewan MacLeod: “How to tweet your way out of a job http://tinyurl.com/d5372c deary me!” (via FriendFeed)

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Ewan MacLeod “How to tweet your way out of a job http://tinyurl.com/d5372c deary me!” March 17 at 5:19 pm – Comment – Like Uh oh… – Ewan MacLeod

The rest is here:
Ewan MacLeod: “How to tweet your way out of a job http://tinyurl.com/d5372c deary me!” (via FriendFeed)

MIR’s Twitter ROI statistics

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

It’s not about how many followers you’ve got on Twitter (but if you’d like to buy 1,000 of them, click here), it’s about how many of them are interested in what you’ve got to say, right?

I did a little yesterday — and I’ve been doing a test with bit.ly as well — to measure the ‘return on investment’ of Twitter.

The click-through stat (along with re-tweet) is probably one of the most effective measures of the responsiveness of your followers.

As of yesterday, 597 people followed @ew4n (my personal account) and 634 followed MIReview (the site’s account).

Based on the stats I looked at yesterday over a 24 hour period, MIReview has a higher click-through percentage.

Almost exactly 40% (40.37%!) of followers clicked on MIReview’s Tweeted links.

Whereas only 33% clicked a link sent out via my ew4n personal account.

Immediately I can justify that MIReview has been, historically, an account that you follow if you would like site updates. So logically, more folk are going to click through on this account than via my personal one (which features more friends and other interested parties who might not be particularly turned on by mobile, for example).

Interesting, interesting.

On reflection there’s not that much difference. 7% difference.

But then this was just an arbitrary trial yesterday. I wonder what the results would be measured across hundreds of tweets?


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