Abiro - Mobile News

Get started with MIDlet development using NetBeans 6.0

2008-04-15T18:58:00.002+02:00

Here's an updated tutorial that shows how to use the new Game Designer tool, as well as basic MIDlet development.

NetBeans 6.0 CLDC/MIDP Development Quick Start Guide

Trend spotting

2008-03-19T19:25:00.003+01:00

This article in the renowned Swedish business magazine "Dagens Industri" indicates a few trends worth noting:
Telia släpper trimmat turbo-3g: Nu öppnar vi alla kranar

All relevant operators in Sweden are now offering flat-rate turbo-3G (or less) for PCs for approx 200 kr / $30 a month. It's become very popular, and is increasingly used as a complete replacement for broadband communication.

Flatrate subs have been expected for a long while, so no big surprise there really, except that the development has been quite quick since the first operator offered this solution.

More surprising, and also a warning sign for Ericsson, is that most of these 3G "modems" are from Huawei. I expect Huawei to compete overall very effectively with both Ericsson and Nokia, and Ericsson will be the first company to lose out, big time. This is not the time to own Ericsson stock. Sadly I do.

Getting into mobile marketing: mm3 Mobile Channel AB

2008-01-27T20:48:00.001+01:00

Long overdue, here's a brief note about one of the companies I'm involved in now: mm3 Mobile Channel AB, or simply mm3.

mm3 focuses on response-based marketing via mobile phones. We also do marketing via other channels as a complement, including e-mail and mobile sites. See the Services page for more information about what we offer.

mm3 Mobile Channel AB - making marketing mobile

Either contact me directly, or use the response form to get in touch with us.

NetBeans 6.0 is out and about

2007-12-04T12:27:00.000+01:00

I'm breaking the silence for this heads-up:

NetBeans 6.0 is completed and released, and can be downloaded from the NetBeans site.

There are big changes to the Mobility package, so beware if you are in the middle of a project and you try to migrate to 6.0. I advice you to try it on a non-critical or completely new project first, especially if you use Visual Designer, as it's both visually and functionally quite different from before, and after porting my current project I got lots of compilation errors. I didn't analyze it further though. I just concluded I can't risk this project now.

The Analyzer function is welcome, as you didn't even get a warning if there were unused resources before.

There's also Game Builder and SVG Composer, so it's a big step forward.

Here's about the new features in the Mobility package.

Top Mobile Applications 2007

2007-10-16T21:50:00.000+02:00

Top Mobile Applications 2007 lists what Fierce considers are the best mobile applications, only that these are primarily Internet-based services, not local applications, even though they all have a service frontend of some sort.

Their value rather stems from the fact that they create links between people, in one way or another. That's a good indicator of what types of applications/services people value in a mobile, not saying that these services are all hugely popular.

The New Economy is real, kind of

2007-10-13T20:54:00.000+02:00

There was a lot of talk about The New Economy before the IT crash a couple of years ago, but I sense there's something close to it still floating around.

Primarily Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and News Corp are fighting about getting the most advertizing money from web services. This is strictly controlled by the amount of users clicking on ads (voluntarily or in many cases by mistake). The services themselves are typically free of charge except for premium upgrades of the accounts.

That's the foundation.

Around these companies and around the world are 1000s of companies that provide Web 2.0 / UGC services hoping that one day, like fish in a pond, they will be caught by the acquisition hook.

So what reason do the big guys have for acquiring these often in practice not-for-profit services?

To stay on top of the user volume and advertizing revenue pile of course.

So what do they get:

users (no profit doesn't mean no users; often the most popular services have millions of users)
service types (even Google is starting to become a dinosaur in terms of innovation, and don't get me started on Microsoft, AOL and News Corp)

Of course if you are the thousandth company that's made a Youtube clone, your chance of being acquired is absolutely zero, but there are other fish to fry in service areas yet unexploited, and it might spell "mobile".

FAQ on Mobile Ajax

2007-10-08T20:37:00.000+02:00

Simply put Mobile Ajax is a version of Ajax that has features for handling the differing and small display sizes and other limitations specific to mobile devices. The FAQ doesn't say anything about access to the camera, Bluetooth etc, so such integration is probably left out. Apart from that, it seems to support the full set of Ajax features: XML/XHTML, DOM editing, CSS, JavaScript, XMLHttpRequest. There are still few mobile browsers being deployed that even support JavaScript, so we are not quite there yet.

There's also a relatively objective comparison of Mobile Ajax and the major mobile application platforms Java ME and Flash Lite.

One reason that Mobile Ajax is more compatible across devices than Java ME is that it's much simpler and doesn't access nearly as much phone functionality than Java ME. It's not the only reason though, that I've mentioned a couple of times before, like Java ME being provided by several different suppliers (read: not good for achieving compatibility). A big advantage of Java ME and Flash Lite is that they both work well for off-line applications. Ajax doesn't.

For Ajax based widgets to work really well from an end user perspective the browser should be fully integrated in the phone's UI and even the main (so called "idle") screen, and ideally the whole UI would be browser based, provided it doesn't cripple the user experience.

Mobile AJAX - Frequently Asked Questions

When hobbyists go mobile

2007-10-08T20:22:00.001+02:00

Note that Vivek Jishtu the author doesn't necessarily select the commercially most relevant platform (which Windows Mobile is far from). He still admits that Java ME is the choice for volume deployment.

That doesn't mean Java ME is always the best choice even commercially. If you develop games it certainly is, but if you make premium business etc applications it likely isn't, in part because the applicable phones also run Symbian OS or Windows Mobile that are much more powerful platforms than Java ME. An exception is the Blackberry that supports Java ME.

The best mobile development platform for hobbyist programmer

The best mobile development platform for hobbyist programmer - II

If you ask the wrong people, you might get the wrong answer

2007-10-08T20:05:00.000+02:00

BuzzCity (a partner of Abiro while mopill.com was up) made a survey at MoCollywood with participants at the conference about how they used mobile services, and not surprisingly (as they are not in the key target group for such services) the responses were not so positive.

This reminds me of a similar occasion at a MAPOS conference a few years ago where one of the speakers blatantly said something like "A Blackberry is all anyone needs", forgetting that almost all users out in the real reality (the one outside the conference hotel) don't have nor want a Blackberry, or a business phone of any other type.

Over half of mobile content execs don't practice what they preach

Some highlights:

72% of respondents believe that mobile social networking services are only in their infancy as an emerging niche

mobile TV and music downloads were among the highest scores in the never used personally category

38.8% of respondents believed that mobile advertising was the most likely source of revenue generation
Fair, but that requires a reason for users to at all see those ads too.

And a word from a BuzzCity representative:
We know from our experience with MyGamma, our mobile social network, that there are emerging markets, such as Africa and Eastern Europe, who do not have easy access to the internet via a PC and want to be involved in a social network by their mobile phone.
Add China and India to that.

Nokia on acquisition prowl

2007-10-08T19:51:00.000+02:00

Acquiring both NAVTEQ and Enpocket is a sure sign Nokia takes location and advertizing seriously and intends to become a leader in such for mobile phones. Maybe they've already figured out that in-car navigators is a tiny market compared to mobile navigators and mobile location based services. As phones are always on-line (at least in theory) up-to-date info could be pushed down e.g. to accomodate location-based advertizing. I'm not sure users would applaud that, but in combination with useful information, it might be acceptable as a way to cut the cost of the service.

Nokia, the internet company, is advertising going to be a major part of the new strategy? hints that advertizing will be the main driver for Nokia, but the connection to location is murky at best. In terms of Enpocket it's all clear as mobile marketing is their turf.

It mentions also Java ME as a means for mobile advertizing, forgetting that MMS is in most phones today, and requires nothing new in the phone to be used for advertizing. It can even be used for user generated content in the other direction, again without having to install anything extra. I guess I should defend Java ME here, but tools should be used for the tasks they are designed for, or at least needed for.

Nokia acquires NAVTEQ

2007-10-02T14:18:00.000+02:00

In a recent press release from Nokia it's clear this is a fact. NAVTEQ is a leading provider of map solutions

I admire Nokia's consistency in its goal to be(come) the world leading provider of navigation / location for mobile phones. They've been on a straight path so far, and this continues in the same direction.

Bitching about the mobile Web

2007-09-27T12:26:00.000+02:00

Update 20071002: Stephen Wellman at InformationWeek counters by saying 'The Top Five Reasons The Mobile Web Rocks', using the same topics. The fight is on...

Here's a rant from DigitalMediaWire on the issues with the Mobile Web, with some arguments of my own:

1. Wireless carrier networks are SLOW

True, but I find that using Opera Mini is sensibly fast even on GPRS. Browsing PC web pages on a mobile in a browser that downloads the full content can be a pain even on 3G, and it's expensive.

2. Public WiFi access is a SCAM

Yes it is. No more comment needed. Wireless WAN (like WiMAX) is needed for this to work.

3. Sites aren’t formated for small screens

True:
* There's yet little business incentive to make mobile-optimized sites. At least perceived such.
* Web designers don't understand mobile.

What companies haven't yet grasped is that mobile is everywhere and everytime, while PC is way more locational and occasional. That in itself changes the conditions for services, marketing etc.

4. Mobile device screens are too small

True and comes with the territory. Higher resolution doesn't help, beyond a certain point, as you can't read and see what's on the screen. Bigger screens make the general mobile experience suffer. Hence, there's no ideal way to solve this, but phones that are "all screen", like the iPhone is a good step in the right direction.

5. Advertising gets in the way

Text-only advertising is fine in my opinion, but picture ads can be annoying due to the small screen, but what most people don't know is that the consumer pays for downloading the ads. When talking picture ads, they can easily be larger than the other page content, which will show up on the phone bill.

The Indian market is evolving at a quick pace, now with 200M subscribers

2007-09-23T12:06:00.000+02:00

A few key points:

'attracted a further 8.31 million wireless subscribers in August to touch 201.29 million users'
Note that a few months ago it increased by 6M per month!

'the number of people owning a telephone out of every 100 people -- rose slightly to 21.20 percent by August'
Hence still a lot of market potential, and also the replacement business has just started.

'The government is aiming for more than half a billion mobile phone subscribers by 2010.'

As some might know I'm involved in a start-up called Mobile Labs Sweden AB that implements mobile text output solutions for India, so this is really good news for us.

Pimp up your N95 with applications

2007-09-23T08:07:00.000+02:00

GISuser.coim provides a listing of free applications for the Nokia N95, some of them using the integrated GPS, e.g. locr, Sports Tracker, Yahoo! Zonetag, twibble and Nokia Maps.

For the few that has a N95, that is.

It's been surprisingly quiet about the 6110 Navigator since its release, that's considerably less expensive than the N95, even though I believe these applications work on the 6110 as well.

Mobile 2.0 is upon you, whether you risk it or not

2007-09-22T21:22:00.000+02:00

According to Rudy de Waele the upcoming Mobile 2.0 conference in San Francisco is close to sold out.

I guess I need to bury my hatchet about nonsense non-descriptive buzzwords and accept that for some reason the market needs a new catchphrase to describe something that's existed for several years, at least in the minds of industry folks, but less so among the public.

It's not a big conference per se (one day and no parallel tracks), but it looks like the right people are there. The Emerging Technologies slot seems the most interesting.

Mobile 2.0 Conference

Toy robots' effect on technology

2007-09-18T22:37:00.000+02:00

Like mobile phones caused a rapid enhancement and miniaturization of e.g. camera and battery technology, toy robots provide a similar effect on gyros, motors and sensors. Unfortunately yet much less so in terms of AI, as most of today's toy robots are either remote controlled or play through pre-set scripts.

I'm still waiting for the small humanoid thinking robots in Arthur C. Clarke's Rama, but meanwhile it makes much more sense to copy much simpler animal, like the fly mentioned below.

One example of a robot that has some learning capability is the Ugobe Pleo.

Technology Review - Robotic Insect Takes Off - Researchers have created a robotic fly for covert surveillance

i-Sobot - supposedly the world's smallest humanoid robot

Ugobe Pleo - (somewhat) self-learning dinosaur-like robot

Interestingly, when looking for the i-Sobot at Amazon, the "also bought" list covers a lot more robots: Amazon - i-Sobot
For instance the Roboreptile can be found in most toy shops nowadays.

Here's a site about toy/home robots: RobotAdvice

I want an i-Sobot for Christmas.

SMS is dead, long live SMS

2007-09-18T21:51:00.000+02:00

Nowadays everyone talks about mobile TV, Ajax, mobile 2.0 etc, but when looking at what people are actually using and understand, SMS stands out like a pink elephant in an ant farm (you have to be a Swede to fully understand the double pun buried in that phrase).

When talking mobile marketing and value-added services SMS has some very interesting features:

It's a no-brainer to use
Service requests are saved in the Sent box, so it's easy to make another request
Service responses are saved in the Inbox, for easy reference later
Links to mobile sites can easily be added to SMS's for additional information
The user doesn't really have to know how to use the browser to make use of such links, provided at all a data connection can be set up
There's nothing to install
Absolutely all mobile phones support it, so the reach is all mobile phones
It's very easy to describe how to use a service this way: Send 'bla bla' to nnnnn

Sounds neat doesn't it.

More about why I bother soon.

Nokia Acquires Enpocket

2007-09-18T21:46:00.000+02:00

Not known to the broader public, but Enpocket is one of the bigger suppliers of SMS-based mobile marketing offerings, and Nokia acquiring them seems like a very good fit as Nokia expands beyond mobile phones and further into mobile services, complementing its previous mobile marketing efforts as well as its location based service efforts.

NetBeans 6.0 Beta is now available for download

2007-09-18T21:02:00.000+02:00

As previously reported about the Preview, there are a lot of improvements in 6.0. The preview wasn't too reliable, but hopefully the Beta can be used for production programming.

Completely new is the support for Ruby on Rails, but the editor also has significant enhancements. In terms of Mobility the VMD improvements look interesting.

I've just installed it, so more later.

NetBeans ISE 6.0 Beta 1

Silence of the blog

2007-08-16T19:09:00.000+02:00

I'll be too busy with other things until the end of the month, so I've decided to not post any blog entries until then.

See you in September.

Mobile pop-up ads: Right target, wrong weapon

2007-08-14T18:07:00.000+02:00

As we are now more or less free from pop-up ads on PCs they instead move to mobile phones, if the Internet advertizing heavy-weights and others get what they want.

'Pop-up ads: Coming to a mobile phone near you?' argues this is something users will accept and appreciate.

'These companies, such as Mobile Posse and Acuity Mobile, say they're working to ensure that the ads are so useful to customers that they won't be annoying.'
Even so, I have hard to believe I personally would stand this for very long.

'Others would greatly benefit by teaming with operators that can ease the distribution of software by loading it onto the phones before selling them to customers.'
Good luck with that. This is a dream for any ISV, but few gain such access. Such companies must at least make it obvious that also operators gain from such a collaboration via revenue sharing.

SMS seems to be the most logical choice for pop-up ads as it's ubiquitous, people know how to use it, it emulates pop-ups by presenting new messages right on the idle screen (at least most phones do), rather than having to install a special Java application, as required by the mentioned companies.

But better would be if there weren't any pop-ups.

Web 2.0 in the enterprise

2007-08-14T17:48:00.000+02:00

'IT Execs Seek New Ways to Justify Web 2.0' mentions especially wiki as a useful tool for internal information exchange at enterprises, and I'm sure it is.

While I worked for Axis Communications I single-handedly maintained an intranet directory of all technical information we needed for developing our products. Some info was local, but oftentimes all that was needed was a link to the appropriate Web sites. At the time I didn't use any wiki server, all pages were manually edited so I was the only publisher, but the "read only" user experience was pretty much the same.

The key for this to be a success is that there's someone that bothers maintaining the information database. If everyone just posts information, the information and the value thereof deteriorate pretty quickly.

The note mentions costs for setting up a wiki. Of course the cost is not in the wiki server itself, but in the maintenance of the information contained in it.

Also it says it's tricky for IT execs to convince management about setting this up. More often it's the other way around: Management has the vision, while IT execs stalls. Also, setting up a wiki can be done for one specific department for no initial cost, and decided by the department manager.

Just so you all know, wiki is a very old technology, Internet-wise. The first wiki was published already 1994.

I have to admit I don't like the wiki syntax, that makes very little sense and seems to have been defined during a meth binge.

MIDlet certification is not for the faint of heart and strapped on cash

2007-08-10T17:50:00.000+02:00

'How MIDlet Signing Is Killing J2ME' is not a very certification friendly note, but admittedly it's true.

Oddly the certification requirements for Symbian applications are not at all as hard, even though such applications have access to much more functionality and also much more openly, than Java ME / MIDP ditto.

As I've mentioned before, even with such warnings popping up it's easy to ask the ignorant user to accept them to be able to benefit from the application, and hell will still break loose if the application is actually a trojan.

See also my comments to the note.

LiMo gets more endorsers

2007-08-10T17:41:00.000+02:00

Aplix, Celunite, LG Electronics, McAfee, Wind River, ARM, Broadcom, Ericsson, Innopath Software, KTF Co., MontaVista and NXP have now joined as well, according to Mobile Linux group gets wider support.

'A standard platform not just promises to reduce development time for new cell phones but could also provide a common platform on which to build applications so expenses can be lowered.'

The most critical benefit is cross-device application compatibility for all players, including the manufacturers, as it would also be better for them to be able to choose from low-cost off-the-shelf products, instead of having to develop applications on their own or integrate "middle ware" applications. It's also critical that end-users can install such applications after phone purchase. Just see how Opera Mini has changed what's expected from browsers on featurephones. Without a standard platform (in this case Java/MIDP) that would never have happened.

LBS: Mobile phones combine location and always on line

2007-08-10T17:30:00.000+02:00

'TeleNav Adds Social Networking Features and Business Reviews to Mobile GPS Navigation Service' is not all new, but certainly still relevant.

TeleNav is fundamentally a navigation application running on a mobile phone, but as the title says, also other aspects of location have been added, and it makes good use of information on line. A few examples:

Plan trips on line and then download
Share locations
Look up addresses

etc

An interesting aspect is that you can e.g. mark where you parked your car, and then track your way back to it when on foot.