Context is the Future of Mobile

Context aware solutions are the future. Let me add something else - without context you're just a "dumb pipe", with context you can personalize the web. And that's a game changer.

Flash, HTML5 or Bust?

With More Flash, Is Google About To Cut Off The HTML5 Nose To Spite Apple’s Face?

More confusion and uncertainty for developers and users alike.

The Web

Mobile and Desktop connect to the "same" Web. And that you - using both, are the same user.

So what's the problem?

The Web server can't figure out what's what or whose who.

Insufficient data - but what if it (the web server could figure out ahead of time?)

How does 5o9 differentiate?

Imagine this scenario: Your sitting at your desktop PC and have a browser open and it’s connected to a local news web site. Also on the desktop is your Smartphone. It’s running the installed browser and it to is connected to the same local news web site as the desktop PC.

So what’s the difference between the two devices?

As far as the Internet and Web server running the news site - absolutely nothing. It has no idea of exactly what is connected to it. In technical terms this is known as DEVCAP or “Device Capabilitites”. Imagine that, there are now approaching a ¼ Billion web servers (www.netcraft.com) out there and none of them can accurately determine “DEVCAP” in real time.

But what if they could?

What if every web server on the planet had the capability to accurately determine in real time the connecting devices capabilities? What would that mean? Well for starters you wouldn’t have to build “Mobile Platforms”. They would be irrelevant because the web server would use the already existing content management systems to deliver the appropriately formatted content. In addition, if they (the web server), had additional context (i.e. personal and location information) they could “accurately match the right ad to the right person” (advertising is a matching problem - link)

In essence you could personalize the web.

That’s the 5o9 differentiator - we’ve solved the DEVCAP problem for every device that connects to the Internet - and we did it using all approved and existing standards.

Mobile Apps vs. The Mobile Web

Communities Dominate Brands: Paid smartphone apps - half get under 1,000 downloads! What does this mean

He's right - Mobile apps are not a business model. The Mobile web is.

HTML5 - not ready for mobile prime time

IE9, standards, and why Acid3 isn't the priority

A must read if you think that HTML5 is the key to unlocking Mobile. It's not.

First point to consider - it was never designed with mobile in mind.

Second point - implementation of the standard will take years and differ from browser to browser.

The Immaculate Conception

Michael Gerson - Democrats show their true colors in push for health reform - washingtonpost.com

My favorite part - a new definition of the Immaculate Conception.... "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is working her parliamentarians overtime to achieve the congressional equivalent of the Immaculate Conception -- a law without a vote."

Hard to imagine that 1/6 of the US Economy hangs on something that has no vote attached to it.

The American people should be outraged.

Change

YouTube - Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.

3 minutes and 49 seconds of your time. This captures and frames it perfectly. America is about to change in way that is so incredibly profound that it will alter the very landscape and culture. As Abraham Lincoln said - you don't make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak. If you wipe out the middle class you will have done just that.

You're on the brink of doing it.

Game on for the Operators

The problem for operators, though, will be in getting their apps in the hands of users on other networks. That’s an entirely new strategy for carriers, which have long deployed products and services solely to attract new subscribers and hold on to the customers they already have.

link: The Challenge for Network Operators in Mobile Web 2.0 – GigaOM

Fraud on Wall Street - no longer a surprise

There's Deep Fraud On Wall Street, And Goldman's Behavior In Greece Is Just The Tip

Whatever happened to Trust and Transparency? We're turning into a drive by nation with an attention span of a few seconds all for what?

Clever Advertising on Mobile

Communities Dominate Brands: How to do Clever Mobile Advertising in 2010? Don't copy web!

Tomi has three things right:

1) Mobile is personal
2) Mobile is permanently with me
3) Mobile is always on

But the rest is going to fade away. The phone to beat is the iPhone. Does it support SMS and MMS. Yep but you pay for it. Can it do HTML5 yep - but it's restricted to what it can access.

The future is smarter data plans, smarter browsers and smarter phones. We won't be using WAP 5 years from now. It will all be HTML - why because it's easy to use and it works on all devices not just mobile. And that's the point that I believe Tomi is missing - the Web is the common denominator across all platforms - SMS and MMS don't work on the desktop, but HTML does.

As for advertising - American Airlines can extend their brand via SMS and MMS. They have the budget - but Joe the Plumber is out of luck. It's too expensive to advertise and too hard to reach the customer. Advertising on Mobile will be different - it will be personal. The problem is how do you get the customers personal information to make the ad personal?

Finally Tomi mentions that Mobile has a built in payment system. Yep, owned and operated by the carrier. Once again the bell tolls.

What about a Mobile wallet that has my information in it, and that is shared with a trusted web service manager who processes the payment. Don't believe it's possible - see what First Data has in mind.

Mobile is simply a huge market place. It defies a real description, billions if not trillions will be made in this market in the next decade.

Start your engines!

Mobile - it's not the desktop

It's fascinating to watch what's going on in mobile these days. Everyone is rushing to put a stake in the ground. Everyone thinks they have the answer. Let me let you into a secret - they don't. There is no silver bullet.

While everyone champions their solutions that will solve world hunger and defy gravity, I still sit here with a state of the art mobile phone that if I use the browser and go to a search site, it has no idea Where I am, Who I am, and What my device is capable of. If I click on an ad all I get is garbage. And this is progress? Clearly not.

People out there think HTML5 will solve what ails them, if that doesn't work we can use widgets - snippets of code that run on the device and access the devices capabilities and then share that with a web service using JavaScript. Only one tiny problem - those widgets don't work in a cross platform environment.

And that's just for starters. We're talking about sophisticated programmers with years of experience, we're talking about large development budgets, and probably even larger marketing budgets.

Exactly how many people/companies out there can afford that? Confusion reigns supreme while the Elephants - Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, and Nokia do battle in the jungle.

They have all set their eyes on the consumer market which is nowadays dominated in the US by Apple. What about the Enterprise - who is working with them?

Why isn't Apple dominating in the Enterprise - could it be that if you want to install an app on the iPhone that you have to do it via the iStore and the iTunes software. Can you imagine admins supporting iTunes on their employees desktops. I think not. Whatever happened to good old OTA - Over The Air installation.

The future is clear - Mobile is the final frontier. It's Personal, it's always with Me, and it's always on. That is a very large market place. It will live in the Enterprise by day and the Consumers hands by nights and weekends.

And as for advertising on Mobile - it won't happen. It will become contextual information based on what I like, where I am and what the device can display.

Anything less and it will fail, because Mobile is not the desktop.

Open vs. Closed

Stuck in the iPhone mindset, AT&T locks down apps on their first Android phone

Fascinating - Google & AT&T take a leaf out of the Apple playbook and restrict the download of apps to the Google Android Marketplace. Is this a smart idea?

I don't think so. The Android Marketplace is nowhere near as sophisticated as the iStore and there are too many issues related to a frictionless checkout (which Apple have mastered).

Instead now developers are forced to go the route of the most resistance which in the short term drives up app numbers at the Android marketplace but pisses off the customers as they fight to download these apps.

Ultimately this is just not a good customer practice. Customers want solutions to their problems, not more problems. AT&T could have done a lot better in this regard, however I suspect there are some "competing" agendas at work here.

The future of America is not looking so good

Choosing the Nation's Fiscal Future

This is a free download and I urge you to read it. It doesn't matter what party affiliation you have, the debt doesn't discriminate.

This image reveals a disturbing picture...

There is simply no way that this is sustainable. It is staggering that Washington continues to spend without addressing the core problem... Costs and a plunging tax base.

Web apps vs. Mobile apps - it's a NO brainer

Someone asked me yesterday what it would take to extend an existing Web app/service to a mobile device vs. building a mobile app.

So I thought about it and here's some ideas...

Imagine this scenario - you have an existing web service that you would like to extend to mobile, and you need to ensure that your customers data is kept private. What would it require using 5o9’s solution?

• On the server
• Download and install mod_mobile - 44k (to put this in perspective this post is bigger than that)
• Add the following line to your config file: LoadModule mod_mobile Modules/mod_mobile.so
• Reboot the server
• Elapsed time - 1 minute or less
• On the mobile client
• Download and install 5o9 Mobile app
• Elapsed time - 1 minute or less
• Actual programming work
• Design your mobile pages - make sure the home page is dynamic (a script)
• Choose your contextual menus - each requires a single line of code - something like this <menuitem text="Pay for Dinner" action=http://www.visa.com>
• Elapsed time - 2 weeks

That’s it. If you didn’t need encryption scratch the “on the server” part. Save yourself a minute.

Compare the above with building a Mobile app for Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone and Android. Here’s some of the question(s) that you need to answer...

• How long would it take to build and design a mobile app that works on WM, BB, iPhone and Android - each app will have a minimum of three screens and multiple menus?

Bonus question…

• How long would it take to integrate these apps into your back end web services?

And if you’re up for it…

• How long would it take to revise each of the apps you’ve built to accept new services?

Remember - there are 4 operating systems, multiple revs of each operating system, 4 different programming languages and multiple form factors.

Hint - it will take you longer to find the programmers to code your solution than it will to ship it using 5o9's solution.