Tag: Mobile Web

Nokia suggests WURFL for device recognition

Nokia recently (May 29, 2007) released Version 1.0 of a document describing the guidelines to develop Mobile Web sites specific for their devices, of course. The document is specifically aimed to developers and authors that want to target the most recent and advanced mobile browsers, based on Apple’s Webkit. The document is called “Nokia Web Browser Design Guide” and you can download it for free (after registering) from Forum Nokia.

It is good to see another big company, shortly after Ericsson, to suggest WURFL.

Mobile Web Toolkit by BeeWeeb Technologies

BeeWeeb Technologies, an Italian software-house (does anybody still use this term?), has recently launched the first version of a new software called “Mobile Web Toolkit“.
The Mobile Web Toolkit is more a technology and a set of tools rather than a simple software. The technology is the result of a few years of experience developing software for mobile devices and for mobile operators, it is a technology to produce a layout that is mobile-friendly from content that was meant for desktop browsers.
Its current incarnation, and only open-source, is a plug-in for WordPress, but BeeWeeb has promised to release more plug-ins and libraries. The open-source version is based on WURFL, but reading the FAQ I think they also mean to provide tools to carriers and that will be based on a proprietary technology that might, later, be integrated with WURFL.

I also spotted a web-version of a presentation they made on the Mobile Web Toolkit that also adds some info about the technology in general and their plans to release more software in the near future.

Vodafone UK: welcome flat fee data, good bye IM and P2P

Vodafone is introducing a new data plan which is very near to a flat fee if not even better. Customers will pay a flat 1 pound per day to browse anywhere including the portal AND any site on the web.

Unfortunately this does not include VoIP and specifically Skype (which I can understand it not only uses a lot of bandwidth, but would also take away money from Vodafone), but it also does not include any kind of IM.
When using these services customers will be charged the standard fee per MB. Are they scared of losing money on SMS? Too much traffic due to the presence (clients regularly connecting the servers to ping)? How long will it take for users to install a Jabber server on a personal server (so none of the well known ICQ, GTalk, MSN servers) and using a non-standard port? Back to blacklists?

Read the Overview and the cost details.

GAIA Image Transcoder

A few weeks ago I had a nice lunch with two guys from Open Reply, Michele and Patrick. Reply is an italian IT company, very big. Open Reply is a division that is focused on open-source projects.
Our lunch has been a work-lunch, of course, and was centered around the idea of releasing some of their software as open-source.

GAIA Image Transcoder or GIT is a Java library to transcode images. The project was born as part of a bigger project to provide content in many different formats that would be suitable for the web, for WAP browser and more. It is an ambitious project built of a set of modules that allow them to produce the desired layouts.
GIT is part of that and is the part that takes care of reading an image in “any” format and produce, if needed, a new image suitable for the browser requesting the content.

The project is developed on top of standards and de-facto standards like JAI, Apache Commons Discovery and WURFL, of course.
Needless to say that WURFL is the source that is used to understand what size and format is supported by the browser.

What I really like about the release is that it’s a pure open-source project, licensed with the very permissive LGPL license, but has the big shoulders of a big IT company and you can see this by all the documentation and the comments in the source.
This is another good sign of how a company can take good inspiration from the open-source and try to give something back to the community.

Open Reply is not only looking for contributors, but also for comments, bug reports and suggestions of how to improve it. I think they have the best approach and a lot of openness to new ways of making business.
The project is hosted on sourceforge and the files can already be downloaded and tested.

Best wishes to this new product in the big family of the open-source and of WURFL.

3GSM World Congress is over

So the 3GSM World Congress is over. Our 1 time meeting for 2007 is gone. Last time I visited was many years ago and it was still in Cannes. At that time I thought it was a huge Expo and that it was very crowded. I had heard that they moved from Cannes to Barcelona because it’s bigger, well now I understand.

I heard 60.000 people attended. Day 1 was already crowded, but days 2 and 3 were really unbelievable. Hall 8, the one with all the big manufacturers was inaccessible and even if you could get in, it was almost impossible to reach the devices available for testing or talking to anyone at the booth. You HAD to have an appointment and in most cases they only lasted 10-15 minutes. All the big manufacturers had separate rooms or upper floors for meetings, but anyway it was really full of people going back and forth, chatting, talking, exchanging business cards.
The atmosphere was amazing. Everyone was clearly there to make business. I have visited other Expositions, of course, both as a normal visitor or to make business, but this one, it was clear to everyone that they were there to make business. Everyone was open to talk, ready to explain what they do and listen to what you do and see if there’s any chance to buy or sell something. It’s been really amazing. I’m not a sales guy, of course, but really anyone, even me, could have made business during this show.

There are already a lot of articles about the Congress, so I’ll go straight to the main points.

What did not surprise:

  • Motorola: was it 2007? 2006? 2000? It seems like it’s still the StarTac from the Nineties. Aren’t their phones all clones of the RAZR which is a slim version of the StarTac?
  • Nokia: same as above, where is the innovation?
  • mobileTV was everywhere
  • IMS was everywhere

What surprised me:

  • SonyEricsson W880: imagine the already very good W810i, imagine it thinner, lighter, nicer, faster. If the price is reasonable, this is going to be a BIG hit. A lot of people I spoke to really liked it, it’s really good!
  • LG KG800: we all know the phone, it’s not new, but the softkeys are really weird. You don’t feel when you click and you never really understand if anything is going to happen. Disappointing experience, sorry.
  • mobileTV hardware vendors, integrators, solution providers were everywhere, but where is the content? Where is that thing that makes everyone want it? Where is that bit that makes it go from the current low-satisfaction state to a big service for everyone?
  • Trolltech had a big booth with about 20 devices running their Linux-based Qtopia. I did not know so many devices use it.

What I liked:

  • Meeting in person with people I have talked via e-mail for years (including Mike, of course!).
  • LG Prada: I was skeptical, I thought it would just be a marketing invention, instead there’s a lot in it. It’s all screen, much like any Palm or subsequent PDA, but it’s made to be used with your fingers instead of the stylus. It’s reasonably responsive, nice graphics, nice features. It’s basically a smartphone with style. As per the KG800, the feedback on fingers is not good, it’s like clicking on my kitchen table.
  • Forum Nokia had a full floor above the normal Nokia booth. I had the pleasure of meeting Finn, was a great chat!
  • The general feeling of being part of this market that sometimes feels global and big and some other times you meet the same guys and feels like a small family.
  • Outside of the 3GSM (yes, sometimes I put my nose outside) the general feeling is of a very young city, full of energy, working hard, but also having fun at night. Nice bars, (thank you mystrands), nice restaurants, nice people walking around and having fun.

What I did not like:

  • WiMax: what is it? There were a good number of stands and booths about it, but how does it integrate with the existing networks? I talked to a Sprint representative, I asked why I should buy a WiMax card or phone instead of HSDPA, he said he could not help me as he doesn’t know about HSDPA. So is WiMax for those who don’t know HSDPA? WiMax is for mobile services as per HSDPA; it’s 1-2Mbit when HSDPA is already 3.6. So?
  • Once again Yahoo! Weather tricked me. It was WAAY hotter than expected!

Where is Mike?

I feel in one of those movies from the seventies or even better in a cartoon where you see someone entering in a room, someone else is running after him, enters the same room and at the same time you see the first person to exit from another room and so on.

Where is Mike Rowehl?
Where is Dan Appelquist?

Not that I need the 3GSM to talk to Dan, but I joined the PartyStrands to say hi to Dan and meet Mike in person and I missed them! I arrived around 9pm and they were gone, already (or at least I haven’t seen them!). 😦

I got to meet a lot of interesting people. Make a lot of networking. Met people from Italy. We are really everywhere! They say Spanish is the most commonly spoken language and English is probably going to pass it soon, but Italians are everywhere!

The mood is good. Lots of technologists, mobile people and big companies.

Tomorrow is 3GSM first day!

.mobi case studies

This article was actually published before the job posting that I mentioned earlier, but I thought I should write about it anyway.

.mobi is looking for case studies, companies or projects that have developed a mobile site, faced particular problems and solved them.

If you are looking for a little of extra visibility for your project it’s probably a good chance. Check out the .mobi blog posting, Wanna be a .mobi case study?