Windows Mobile Pocket Internet Explorer gets a new Menu option (or two)

We've just finished porting our 5o9(R) MobileMe to Windows Mobile PocketPc and Smartphone version 5 - 6.1

This enables your customers to share information from their mobile devices in real time with only minimal data entry.

Here are some screen shots showing you how seamless it now is. This is a Blackjack I running Windows Mobile 5.

Shot 1... regular Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE)



PIE with a new menu option


Some of the items that are transmitted automatically via the browser to your web server



This is on an online web page: link. By opening this page in your browser it "echo's back to you" on your screen all of the header information that was sent to the server. As you can see there is now a new User Agent - 5o9MobileMe/1.2.1 and you can clearly see some very useful information on the screen.


So what's next?

Simple - anyone can now build their own widget - for example a little app that reads the GPS chip on board the mobile device. Then using our open API you can "add" this real time information to the outgoing web page request. If the page the customer is requesting is coming from your site you instantly know where that person is. Then you can mash that data up to any search engine and deliver real time GPS enabled seach inside the browser.

See this example for Yahoo Local Search mash up to support Zip code. Alternatively you can do GPS enabled search at this link.

The possibilites are now endless. You can now enable Mobile SaaS (Software as a Service) inside the browser on an mobile phone. Currently we're supporting Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Symbian, Android and iPhone are coming soon.

More information can be found on our web site here

Advertising on Mobile - it's all about knowing Who I am, Where I am, and What device I'm using... Even Sergey says so!

A Quote from Sergey

“You have a significant challenge in mobile, in that the screens are much smaller, so you can’t display nearly as much advertising or take as much space,” Google cofounder Sergey Brin told Wall Street analysts on a recent conference call. “On the other hand, you have much more relevant and timely information, like what location the person might be in, so on balance that leaves me quite optimistic.”

So what's the answer?

Have the mobile phone tell you (the web server) who is on the other end, exactly what the device is capable of displaying and where they are.

This is exactly what our company (www.5o9inc.com) has invented. The future of the web is centered around the following three things:

1. One Platform - the Web
2. One Interface - the Browser
3. Multiple Data Sets - the Context

Our solution enables developers to extend Software as a Service directly to the their mobile customers/employees. It's Open API lets them build ultra thin clients which supply the critical nuggets of information that everyone is after.

The Rocket Ship Model of Investing - good luck

Now bear in mind that there is still no mathematical formulae to predict that the sun will come up tomorrow let alone that a rocket ship approach to investing will work. The following is from Randy Komisar’s book, The Monk and the Riddle 

“Over the last several years… a new investment model has taken hold. Fill each startup with rocket fuel as fast as possible and blast it into space. The ones that fly, fly, and if the rest of them blow up, c’est la vie.

“In fact, the Rocket Ship Model of startup investment has recently produced many of the most prominent Valley successes. But for every one of them, there are many potentially viable companies that might have eventually prospered if they had been incubated longer.

“When too much money is pumped too fast into a startup, there’s no room for mistakes. The initial product and the initial fix on the market have to be right. There’s no way these companies can stop and reconsider what they’re doing with out a great deal of pain.

“You have to be able to survive mistakes in order to learn, and you have to learn in order to create sustainable success. Once the market is understood and the product is fully developed, then move fast and hard.”

Randy has a lot of other wisdom to share:

“[Angels] pay for the privilege of helping the company.”

“If I invest, I am prone to think like an investor, favoring my return over what’s best for the team and often its long-term business.”

“In a privately held startup I don’t favor the investors over the founders. This is probably the crucial way my thinking differs from a VC’s.”

“Business is one of the last remaining social institutions to help us manage and cope with change.”

“The rules of business are like the laws of physics, neither inherently good nor evil, to be applied as you may. You decide whether your business is constructive or destructive.”

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Symbian goes open source

This "could" be a big deal. It's all going to come down to execution. However the Telco's are now in for a fun ride. 5 years from now there will be 1/2 billion Smartphones and as we've already proven with our software (www.5o9inc.com) you can get any information you like off the device and sent to "any" web server simply by adding the data to the outgoing web page request (HTTP Request Headers).

This all adds up to new services for the customer which will bypass the carrier revenue stream.

Telco's will need to get for a slightly new reality - bit pipes.

 

telecoms.com

So you think Mobile is easy

This definitely worth a read. Glitzy demo's raise expectations which invariably have to be deflated as the hard work of integration begins.

We're just finishing a cross platform solution for Mobile. It's taken 30 months of hard, hard work. The demo's we can do in a couple of days, the integration - well that takes time (as Google et al are now finding out)

dw2-0: The dangers of fragmentation

No Place to hide

Most privacy violations are not going to be caused by the exposure of huge personal secrets but by the publication of many little facts... As with killer bees, one is an annoyance but a swarm can be deadly.

- Robert O'Harrow, Jr., No Place to Hide

Something to think about in this day and age of the Internet plus the upcoming revolution in Mobile.

Suicidal Spending - Challenges facing the USA

Well worth watching this slide deck.

Washington is out of control. It will be interesting to see if the next President can be effective in trying to resolve this. Effectiveness means - Doing the right things necessary to stop this problem from becoming worse than it is.

Suicidal Spending

How the iPhone puts a bomb under mobile networks

Here's the good part...

Over at Telco 2.0, the blog of analysts STL Partners, we learn that networks who partner with Apple must install Apple gear at the data center to support its services - specifically, the Push Notification service that wakes up the Jesus Phone.

Forget the revenues from sales of extra server gear - the key point is that Apple now sits in the middle of the data stream, capturing the customer's data. The analyst outfit describes the iPhone as a potential "poison" for the networks.

Now think about what the data is worth for a moment. Then think about alternative ways to get that data directly to your own web server.

The solution is simple - add the context from the device to the HTTP protocol - now when someone contacts your web server you instantly have access to the same data that Apple has.

Contextual advertising anyone?

How the iPhone puts a bomb under mobile networks | The Register

The Coming World of Mobile Sensors

Another idea whose time has come. I've been saying this for years. The next issue is simple to understand - how do I get this "sensor data" up to my web service?

And the answer is simple too - build a widget that accesses the sensor API and reads/collects the data. Then pass this information to a browser plug-in which sends it up to the web server as part of the original page request.

Bingo - your web service now has more context about "Who you are, Where you are, and What device you're using"

 

The Coming World of Mobile Sensors - ReadWriteWeb

FireFox 3 - Close but not quite a cigar

My biggest pet peeve with new software is if it breaks old software. Unfortunately FireFox 3 does this.

Firstly it breaks extensions. I have no idea why, but most still don't work. I can't imagine why extension developers haven't got this one solved yet.

And secondly I personally really dislike favicons - the work around is to go into about:config and disable them. Works like a champ on FireFox 2 and 3 under XP and the same on 2 on Vista - however using 3 on Vista will disable some but not all of them.

Apart from that the new release is pretty darn slick - now all they need to do is do some minor tweaks and it will be ready for the cigar.

Techdirt: The Browser Is The New Operating System

Worth a read... totally agree with the premise. It all boils down to this..

1. One Platform - The Web
2. One Interface - The Browser
3. Multiple Data Sets - The context

That's the future and it's happening now. Start skating to where the puck is going to be

Techdirt: The Browser Is The New Operating System

Financial Armageddon: Who Gets the Credit?

-- on September 10, 2001, Rumsfeld admitting "According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions;"

Amazing - how do people get away with this stuff. Read the rest of the article, the lack of accountability is simply stunning. You just have to wonder what we could have done with $2.3 trillion.

People in Washington should be embarrassed by this.

Financial Armageddon: Who Gets the Credit?

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Barclays, Banks Backed In Corner

This is simply amazing. Pay special attention to the balance sheet. It's hard to believe the management allowed it to get like this.

We know what happens next - the shareholders get crammed.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis: Barclays, Banks Backed In Corner