Rants And Ramblings About Mobile Technology

Samsung introduced Bada late last year. It’s both a platform and a programming language, where the platform itself can run on Linux or other kernels, hinting it could also run in less powerful phones.

Bada will directly compete with Android, that Samsung is putting a lot of efforts into as well, and introducing a new programming language is not at all wise in my opinion.

Except for the learning curve (which is not major for a new language, the key issue is to learn to use the platform APIs and UI paradigm) a big problem within mobile applications is portability, and if not even core functionality can be ported easily, even less so code accessing system and UI functionality, then it adds considerable cost to each project that is to run on Bada as well.

Embedded access to Flash and WebKit is nice, making it very easy to access advanced animation and web pages from within applications, but is this different from Android and iPhone? iPhone doesn’t have Flash yet, but I guess that’s just a matter of time,

I’m by no means a fan of C++, as it’s a hacked together language with most of the C’s no-no’s still remaining: buffer overflows due to no array checking and memory leaks due in part to no garbage collection and manual de-allocation etc. In end-user applications, the gain you get from proper range checking and object handling overshadows possible efficiency drawbacks by far, something Windows developers have learned when moving from C++ to C#.

Registration as a Bada developer is free, so check it out. There’s plenty of documentation at the site, that I haven’t even begun to dig through yet. I’m sure more will be revealed later, and also Samsung’s intentions with Bada vs Android, and possible links in between.

Posted by Anders Borg 17:07 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

To develop applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad a Mac running Leopard is needed, as the SDK/IDE only runs there.

I don’t feel too good about having to buy yet another PC though (I already have 2, and 2 more have been lent out, and 2 further more have been given away as gifts, apart from the 3 or more that are now landfill), and I’m slightly hesitant about a Mac in general, so I concluded that a Mac Mini would be the best choice:

• Relatively inexpensive; the laptops and other desktops are marked up to hell and beyond; shame on you Apple! Also the Mac Mini is marked up more than makes sense, but all in all provides much more bang for the buck than any other option
• It’s very small and I can re-use my peripherals and large screen, providing much more comfort than a laptop, and relieves me from another desktop space-taker
• It’s easily brought along to customers and on trips, yet of course requires peripherals at the destination, at least a screen; a mini keyboard and mouse could be brought along
• I could possibly use it as a home server as well, even though I suspect I will run into Windows/Leopard anger management issues
• If a Mac hater comes to visit, I can simply tuck it away somewhere

Posted by Anders Borg 14:14 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Why won’t these things go away:

• Paper mail, consisting primarily of junk and things that could be e-mailed or web-advertised instead. If e-mail is not secure enough for credit card codes and what-not, just make it secure. The technology for that has existed for 20 years.
• Air travel, that is a major polluter and time waster.
• Cars, that are also major polluters, and in bigger cities major time-wasters too.
• Unsolicited e-mail, when chat has so clearly solved it, by requiring invitation/confirmation, stopping any kind of unsolicited messages. Well, almost completely at least.
• Big and power-consuming PCs, when in an office you really only need a laptop or a small desktop PC (e.g. Mac Mini or Dell Optiplex).
• Fixed line phones, when you really only need a mobile phone, that is yours rather than shared among family members or colleagues at the office. Switchboards can easily be emulated in the network, also for family use.

Just thinking…

Ironically, most of the country representatives at the environment meeting in Denmark recently travelled by their own limousine to the meeting on a daily basis. Leading by example, not.

I intentionally didn’t mention mobile phones too much, as the environmental impact is still not fully comprehended and accepted. As people switch phones so often the environmental impact should be quite big. Even more so now when this behavior occurs across the world.

China’s decision to require USB charging in phones, so that chargers can be re-used between phones was clever indeed. Actually too clever for the Western world, that should have come to that conclusion long ago, and did just recently. More thinking like that and I might feel more calm about the mobile future.

Posted by Anders Borg 12:57 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Some that have been writing about the Apple iPad thinks so.

If so, it’s been a long time coming. If you are in the know, proper e-book readers or e-readers have been around for over 10 years, yet without much commercial success. Instead, audio books (stored on CDs or downloaded) have been the step beyond paper books, and paper books are as popular as ever, especially pocket, that are flying off the shelves.

Amazon and its Kindle and ditto in-device purchase system broke some new ground, and is kind of analogous to what Apple did with the iPod and iTunes (read: established a complete infrastructure), yet not being nearly as successful as the iPod.

The iPad is in my opinion not a given winner in any way, and remember that Apple has had some huge flops over the years. Hopefully the iPad will not be put on that list.

Even so, I hope it’s time for e-books anyway considering the benefits, that people (irrationally?) have hard to understand:

• You carry along your whole library of books and magazines, without breaking your back. As some e-books / e-pads also have browsers and wireless connection, you can also get knowledge online without switching device.
• Magazines are updated dynamically, and possibly many times a day, the same way online magazines are, with latest news immediately available and with possible alerts about breaking news.
• An e-reader is much more portable and practical than a laptop for reading information.

As the iPad is more of a portable computer than an e-reader proper (in my opinion), there are a few important issues, compared to the Bookeen e-reader (as that’s the one I have):

• Battery life is only 10 hours. A normal e-reader lasts days. Especially when reading literature, this becomes a hazzle, so you are very likely charging the iPad constantly, so you don’t run out of battery just when it starts to get exciting. The battery of the Bookeen lasts “forever”.
• Long term readability is poorer due to a color LCD display rather than EInk or similar. This is arguable though, as I have no problem reading from a backlighted LCD display for hours, but some might consider it tiring. The Bookeen has EInk that’s very comfortable to read, but page flipping speed is admittedly too slow for comfort.
• It’s more clumsy and fragile than proper e-readers. The Bookeen can be thrown around, and seems generally quite forgiving when it comes to scratches etc, and it’s also very light. That’s not the case with the iPad, that’s as fragile as the iPhone.

Apple will sell e-books via iTunes, and will therefore compete head-on with primarily Amazon. I don’t care who wins, I only hope people will see the light (finally) that e-books make sense.

Posted by Anders Borg 12:24 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

I promised I wouldn’t write more about Motimate here, but I’ll do it anyway (t’s my blog, damn it).

Here are a few articles in Swedish magazines about Motimate. No reviews so far, only mentions, primarily highlighting the partnerships with Dagens Nyheter and Paolo Roberto, as well as the mobile aspects of the service:

• EkonomiNyheter - Dagens Nyheter - Paolo Roberto del av DN:s nya hälsosatsning
• Resumé - DN värvar Paolo Roberto
• Dagens Media - Paolo Roberto ska stärka DN
• DN.se - Kom i gång med träningen med DN och Motimate

It’s all in Swedish, but Google Translate can probably fix that, to some extent.

Posted by Anders Borg 11:52 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Like I write about in Digitally Distributed Audio - theory, opinions and links and Mobile Trends 2020, all music will be distributed via downloads (files or streams) in the near future, and it will sound like crap, relatively speaking.

Clearly most are not aware that this is happening. Music quality had a peak during the ending years of the LP (listen to a Deutsche Grammophon album and you’ll be amazed, provided you have the audio equipment for it), yet had the notorious “crackle” problem that no one really missed (well, maybe a few), and the CD sounds also reasonably well, but lacks in dynamics. Those content carriers are now being replaced by sub par quality compressed audio.

You might think this is not too bad, yet remember that mixes done in the studio are at least 24 bit, 96 kHz uncompressed multi channel. Even a CD is very far from the fidelity and dynamics of the original mix.

There are ways to remedy this, e.g. by making 5.1 or 7.1 mixes stored as MPEG-2 audio or similar and requires multiple speakers, but those files will be huge in comparison, and what seems to matter most now is download speed and storage size. Not that it matters that much in the long run, considering a complete album doesn’t take that much space on a server (of course stored only once). Storage is cheap and bandwidth is increasing fast.

Despite the currently bleak future when it comes to audio quality, I hope there will be room for high quality distribution of music as well and that people will care enough to make it profitable. There are a few dedicated artists that make high quality 5.1 mixes, but those are rare, and I doubt they are really profitable. They of course also release their albums in standard CD and download formats.

Another thing that’s happening is that as music can be bought per track via the download sites, the amount of single track purchases is sky-rocketing. Especially when it comes to mainstream pop music this will be the norm, and I even believe those (possibly) mayfly artists will stop making albums altogether, as that just takes extra time, and decreases the potential of quickly reaping the benefits of e.g. TV and online appearances. I’m sure music companies will realize this quickly enough as revenues go down.

Interestingly video quality is going the other way, from crappy analog formats to increasingly high resolution, high quality digital formats, where also the audio gets a much needed quality improvement. Well, at least until everything is downloaded.

In any case, I will continue buying CD (or better) albums until there are none left. I’m definitely no longer in the mainstream target demographic.

Posted by Anders Borg 10:33 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

It’s like an iPod Touch (yet can be upgraded with 3G) with larger screen. It can actually run existing iPod Touch / iPhone applications.

Will iTunes provide ebooks now?

Engadget: The Apple iPad: starting at $499

Posted by Anders Borg 14:56 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Here are the country finalists for the Mobile Premier Awards in Innovation.

The MoMo Malmö finalist (Color Monkey) isn't mentioned. I guess it's strictly one per country.

Posted by Anders Borg 14:53 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Predicting 10 years into the future of mobile is obviously not for the faint of heart, but Rudy de Waele took up the challenge and asked other people to contribute. I wasn’t invited as far as I know, so here are my tidbits. I include a few predictions that don’t have specifically to do with mobile, but are important for painting the whole picture.

• Most information will be stored on the Internet and all multimedia will be streamed yet possibly cached locally. The user will be unaware of such caching (or technology in general). To them all multimedia is on-line and can be accessed from any device.
• There will be no sales of multimedia on physical media, at all.
• We will not think of mobile phones as a specific phone device, but rather as generic information hubs/windows that you carry with you.
• Each person will have one or more service-independent avatar of themselves serving as identities for payments as well as virtual ones for games and other joint on-line experiences. This will be standardized.
• Mobile devices will be used for day-to-day payments, replacing magnetic stripe and smart cards.
• There will be no revenue from selling mobile devices, so completely new business models need to be set up. Apple is showing the way by adopting after market commerce.
• Operators will become pure wireless broadband providers, and some will simply vanish, not able to cope with market needs.

I might add to this over time.

Posted by Anders Borg 11:54 | Permalink | 1 comments | Links to this post

If you like me have wondered where a company like bit.ly gets their revenue from, I discovered that they sell stats for link clicking. E.g. Magpie (a Twitter ad broker) uses their stats. Even Twitter is doing such “under cover” business, but the question is of what.

As you know bit.ly provides shortening of links for Twitter and other posts/updates, and to resolve the link the bit.ly service looks up the short code and navigates the user’s browser to the real link. Extremely simply to implement of course (literally a few lines of code for just that; more for the UI, etc).

As I indicated in How to become the next big Web success it’s paramount to be first (or at least perceivably first), and services don’t have to be complicated to become successful. Quite the opposite actually, as a complicated service has harder to become a backbone service, like e.g. Twitter has. Facebook was also very simple initially, even though it’s now the most advanced SNS.

Twitter almost doesn’t do anything (technically speaking), but what it does is so generally useful and easy to understand and also creating an ever-increasing flocking effect, sucking in users from the whole world, leaving competitors with way fewer users, and equally less ad revenue etc, eventually killing those companies (survival of the most used). That’s not saying it’s inexpensive to run Twitter now (probably neither is bit.ly). They need quite some service horse power, but my point is that you don’t need that at the start, and as popularity and revenue/capital grow, so can your server park, without your base concept changing much. Of course your business model should adapt to the fact that you suddenly have many users.

I have many ideas for Web / mobile services that are of this simple backbone / elevator pitch type, but there’s always the problem of establishing a phenomenon that initially no one knows about and that competitors could easily copy early on and that way establish themselves as the innovators (you never hear of the failed real innovators). Maybe I should just stop thinking about that and go ahead. The benefit of being naive and ignorant (a young person is that for real; adults have to pretend they are) is that you don’t see the text book warning signs, that don’t seem to apply to Web services anyway.

Posted by Anders Borg 11:30 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Still, after so many years of Premium SMS and MMS as well as WAP charging, telecom operators charge a very sizeable cut relative to the price the customer pays for the product, rather than a fixed or at least low relative transaction fee.

Think a payment broker that would pull roughly 1/3 off the sales transaction. That would clearly be insane and merchants would not accept it, yet telecom operators continue with this strange habit. Admittedly charging even 3-5% is also high, but easier to live with. In that case the “better with a sale with lower margin than no sale at all” mantra kicks in.

It becomes a very real problem if you want to provide different payment options to customers and they buy something that actually costs to individually produce and deliver. Obviously you can’t charge considerably more for the product if they pay via SMS (they simply won’t use that payment method), so it doesn’t work well there.

For e.g. ringtones it’s no problem: If the customer pays $2, the cost of the product is so very low that it doesn’t matter that the operator takes a big chunk of those $2. Also, as ringtones typically can’t be bought via e.g. credit card, you never see a comparative “real” price.

If you sell more substantial things yet possibly all digital, like a membership to Motimate (let’s pretend it’s just an arbitrary “off the top of my head” example) it’s a different story, as there are costs involved in handling each member.

The operator is not all to blame here. The brokers that provide merchants access to all operators in a region follow the same model, relieving you from even more of your hard-earned revenue.

In the ideal world I would be able to sign up to a payment broker and get credit card, bank and SMS/WAP payment with the same or similar cuts across the board.

Posted by Anders Borg 10:24 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Update 2010-02-11: A general advice is “Just do it”, provided you have the financial and time possibility. Over-analyzing things will make you worried, unproductive and guaranteed to miss an opportunity. I wish I had followed that advice when the iPhone came out. Remember that e.g. the first incarnation of Twitter took a few weeks to develop. Things don’t have to be complicated to become successful.

Based on my experience and exploration of others’ successes, not saying I’ve actually followed my advice very well. As always, there are no guarantees.

• Provide something that’s either really different and new compared to anything else, or enough different to reach a new demographic or region, that can be easily explained how it’s different (think elevator pitch).
• Be first. Very important, yet of course hard to nail. However simple your solution is (maybe it took a few weeks to code; think Twitter), people and especially the always news-chasing media will think you are a genius just because you were first with something new. The problem is of course to retain the lead, but it’s also a fact that the first provider is more likely to get the most users/customers, will have easiest to get more funding etc.
• Think in terms of the network surrounding the company and the service (literally draw it), and how it benefits you: actors (users, advertisers, investors, media etc), revenue flows, complementing partners providing functionality (inwards), marketing/branding of the solution (outwards), etc.
• Start simple, and add new features and business models in a calm yet experimenting manner, that brings in the most users and/or the most cash (preferably both). Don’t try to do everything at once, and don’t make the service too complicated or sprawling.
• Think revenue from the start (a business without revenue is not a business, unless your goal is to get acquired before you go bankrupt; I can think of many Web services that would fall under that category), for the service as such or for “premium” features.
• Immediately think ad revenue unless you explicitly charge for the service. Preferably not via Google Adwords and similar “robotized” services, but via premium ads, that companies will pay much more for. Especially if your service is targeted they will do so, and the willingness and cost of course increases with the amount of users.
• Establish a broad business network, and generally get known as a capable and competent person. It’s amazing how much business is done informally, especially when it comes to financing. Know people so they know you.
• Focus on getting the most amount of users and make it hard to unregister (big funnel in, no funnel out). Amount of users is hard cash in the somewhat virtual business of Web services.
• If users pay for the service, do recurring payments, so users need to decide to get out of the boat rather than constantly deciding to get into the boat. This has served many companies very well in bringing in more revenue. I’m not a fan of the ringtone business’ way of doing almost hidden recurring payments, so be open with this fact.
• If providing complementing premium features, keep the threshold low enough so that more intense users will feel the pain of just having access to the free parts of the service. This is a balance act of course, and might need to be tweaked over time, but a rule of thumb is that if people are using your service for their own commercial gain (promotion-wise, as an offload site for their material etc) they should pay for that fact. E.g. Flickr has done this really well. YouTube might, etc.
• Don’t provide interactive support and other personnel-expensive services. Let users help themselves via forums and Q&As as much as possible. Absolutely don’t provide phone support. That’s really expensive.
• Build hype in the investment community, so you maximize your company’s virtual worth. Mingle a lot in that community. Investors go more for the confidence you express and they also like patents and currently hyped phenomena (think iPhone, cloud, location, app stores, etc) a lot. Don’t expect them to be technically competent. People focused on finances don’t tend to be, even though they might be gadget freaks even so.
• Choose what type of investor you want before they choose you. See to that investors can become a complementing actor in the company in terms of business networking, business formalities etc. Be aware that some investors early on might want to control the company, which is very dangerous during the creative/chaotic start-up phase. Experienced investors know they should keep their hands off while everything’s going well, but “poke” when it doesn’t..
• Something many forget, but some are smart enough to use: Investment money increases the value of the company, making it easier to get even more money, and you also get a promoter that obviously wants to achieve a sizeable future exit, so they will further inflate the value of the company among their peers. It’s a positive spiral, unless you run into dire straits economically, but oftentimes investors are so committed that they will pump in even more money. Morally arguable to utilize, yet I know several examples of that in the ‘hood.
• Don’t expect yourself to be a Swiss Army Knife in terms of managing a company. You need to rely on other people, inside the company and/or in your business network. If you are brilliant at designing and coding services and applications doesn’t necessarily mean you are good at book keeping, marketing, sales etc. Or vice versa.
• Decide what you need to develop and know within the company. Acquire part solutions to save time, increase quality, decrease cost etc. Yet, retain total control over what makes your offering unique. You should control the outcome, don’t allow the tools to.
• Bring in people with graphic and usability skills. Don’t rely on engineers to understand end-user needs, even if they obviously are end-users themselves. What might be obvious to an implementer is rarely obvious to a user that sees the service from the outside as a “black box”.
• Be clear about what you want to get out of the risk-taking, long hours and constant conflict situations that is an evolving start-up. Wealth should be in there somewhere, even though people don’t tend to want to admit that. There’s always 9-to-5 jobs that are infinitely more secure than starting a business.
• Don’t risk your own hard-earned money. You should go plus, not minus. You are of no use to the company and yourself if you go personally bankrupt.
• Possibly run a business on the side, but don’t expect you can do that in the long term if you and your company are to become the new sensation.

Posted by Anders Borg 00:11 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Google is the leading company within Internet-based services, coverage-, revenue- and profit-wise.

Their only real business is advertising (not search, mind you: search as such doesn’t provide any revenue, it’s only an enabler for their business as an advertisement broker; the same business as most magazines are in).

Why does Google acquire so many companies, and why for so morbid sums of money (or stock)?

• They save years of technical and market development
• They get rid of a competitor that would otherwise taint their own attempts with similar services (note e.g. YouTube vs their own rather lame video service)
• They increase their lead compared to direct competition (Yahoo!, Microsoft, etc) and that way gets more of the available worldwide advertising money
• Their acquisitions generate even more stock value
• If for no other reason, they have shitloads of money and can do pretty much anything they want

They have a preference for acquiring advertising or advertising-enabling companies for obvious reasons.

But as they also work with social network services, mobile phone platforms etc (themselves once acquired) I’m sure there are also acquisition opportunities there. And again, they can also be considered advertising-enablers.

As almost all entrepreneurs have cashing in on their minds, there are many that hear the call, but of course few will be chosen, and only the ones that are leading in an area where Google has a need to add competence, offerings and/or market coverage, and ways to make more money from advertising.

Many companies that Google has acquired I believe would never have survived in the wild (Jaiku and Blogger come to mind), so this could be the saving grace for founders and investors in such companies.

The dying (or at least sick)  newspaper and TV industries that are relying on advertising for revenue (but losing out on it) is being replaced by a digital / on-line / mobile industry that’s almost completely relying on advertising for revenue. The marketing dollars are there (in droves). It’s only the advertiser-to-consumer channels that change. Ads that consumers try to avoid, at all cost, as always. The question is of course, why do people at all click on ads? The question is important, considering it’s driving a huge industry.

Posted by Anders Borg 12:05 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

5 companies contended for the nomination, and people from the telecom and related industries participated and voted.

• Abiro (Twitizer; multimedia enabler for Twitter)
• Ambadoo (intelligent on-line address book)
• Color Monkey (runstar; running helper with tracking etc)
• Combain (Tracker; location of professional vehicles)
• Trivendia (Motimate; training and health coaching)

Color Monkey won.

Posted by Anders Borg 13:23 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

The cat’s completely out of the bag now, and there’s no way to get it back in.

We are continuing work on known bugs and new features, but existing features are stable and users can sign up for the service and get started with their training.

Marketing is going into overdrive now and soon Dagens Nyheter (one of Sweden’s biggest dailies) will use Motimate as their training/health site. That will for sure be the most important member funnel for Motimate in the long term. Right now involved peoples’ blogs and other sites will also serve as links in to Motimate.

I will not report more about Motimate here, unless there are big changes made to the service as such. I have a long list of things I’d like to add to the service, but money talks: Now we need to get some revenue before we invest a lot more in new features.

Posted by Anders Borg 10:48 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

Comparison of company fundamentals, Nokia vs Apple

10 times higher margin.

Sure, a fat margin could mean that too little is invested in new products, marketing etc, but I don’t think that’s the case here. Rather that Nokia has too many products that are not profitable, and also generally too many products, wasting development and marketing funds.

Posted by Anders Borg 23:50 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

I’ve written an introductory page about microcontrollers for hobbyists. There’s a ton of other things to say, but I link to sites where you can find more information, that way avoiding over-straining my index fingers.

Posted by Anders Borg 01:09 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post

The official launch date is now set to January 11. We’ve had some technical issues and also material related issues, causing a delay, but now it’s set in stone.

Motimate

Posted by Anders Borg 14:40 | Permalink | 0 comments | Links to this post