A CloudPhone is an interesting concept

Posted in: Blog, Mobile by openhanced on February 23, 2010

Just back from MWC and I’m recovering from all the news announced. Lots of phones, apps., talks, pacts etc.

However, between all the news I missed an overall visionary overview of the mobile industry and where we are heading. Maybe I missed it because I did not attend the real congress but I heard no buzz around phone functionality in the cloud or CloudPhones.

What is a CloudPhone
To me this is a device that gets 90% of its functionality and content out of the cloud. It includes the interface that is not baked into the device or on SIM but a real fully connected phone with a very lightweight OS. For mobile operators that would mean a smarter bit pipe in the end (they hate the word dumb bit pipe).

For a CloudPhone to happen we need one important thing at least: high-speed wireless access.

Desktop trends vs mobile trends
If we look at the trends in the mobile world and compare that to web 2.0 and the Enterprise we notice a difference, the mobile world is focusing on native (desktop for mobile devices) while web 2.0 and Enterprise is all about cloud. I think this is an remarkable difference especially if you know that the iPhone was web apps. only in the beginning. The biggest question is “why is this the case?”. For sure the answer now is reliable high-speed access everywhere. Whatever phone manufacturers say the concept of phones have not changed much, how we use them however has changed a whole lot. So the question is if we should change the phone model if we get mobile access everywhere? I think we should.

I think it is very weird that we carry around all this privacy data the whole day with a big risk of losing it. Can you imagine you would make a backup of your business data everyday and carry it around the whole day in your pocket? Basically a phone stores a lot of information locally and I see that as a huge risk. If you ask people why they carry their phone the whole day you get two answers:

1. I need to be in touch with everyone;
2. I’m afraid to lose it so that others have all my data when I lose it.

Point 2 is really important, the risk of losing or getting robbed is a real risk everywhere in the world and the old phone model where everything is stored locally is absolutely not the smartest way to do it (again, everything else moves to the cloud).

In the cloud is saver
The cloud is good enough to store all our: Tweets, banking information, credit card information, employee info, invoice etc. so why isn’t it good enough to store all our phone stuff (I don’t mean syncing). Actually, the mobile operator is already storing a lot of our phone information and in some countries they are actually forced to do so.

I notice in talks with other phone users that their contact list is holy although mostly very incomplete. My private contact list on my phone does not contain much information either, just first names or nicknames. I personally would like to have an online contact list without the need to sync., just make calls from a real-time online list.

Having all in the cloud is also much saver and controllable if you lose your phone, you could easily log in through a portal and disable your phone.

The dumb bit pipe discussion and how it can become smarter
Again and again you hear that mobile operators don’t want to be called dumb bit pipes but my point is that they should be very happy. They control who drives on the mobile wireless highway and nobody else. Mobile operators are the ISP’s of the mobile world, they just need to be much more innovative from an end user perspective. From an infrastructure point of view they are already very smart and innovative. They need to think how to move stuff to their cloud infrastructure (contact lists, phone settings) and forget about this dumb bit pipe discussion. They need to look into different ways to setup call connections (see Ribbit) and offer solutions like Dial2Do, Twilio etc.

If they manage to move to a smart bit pipe they can charge even more for Internet access because that is the future for sure.

The CloudPhone, it is almost there
Basically the iPhone and Android are already partly cloud phones because they connect to an incredible amount of online services, everyday more services are released. But, wait a minute, the phone itself is not a cloud device yet, indeed it isn’t. It is still this device with local storage and native apps. However, within 2-3 years it can be. New faster mobile wireless access (Long Term Evolution) can make the CloudPhone happen very soon!

What needs to happen
A lot needs to happen, the mobile industry has evolved but is now on a collision course with standards. Everyone is doing his own OS and the AppStore goldrush is just copycat behavior because nobody can come up with something more innovative. There are two things that need to happen:

1. Availability of high-speed mobile internet all over the planet;
2. New lightweight OS’es that all support the same standards and focus on mobile web apps.

I think Palm is actually the company who has the best and most open implementation although I must confess I have never used it. However, specification wise I can say they have adopted emerging standards.

How does a CloudPhone look like in 2-3 years
A CloudPhone is an always connected device that uses a high-speed always on data connection to present the user with the latest information. It does not use synchronization because it gets all data from the cloud (address book, settings etc.). Only a small core OS will be installed on a SIM card (probably possible) and a browser will take care of the rest. Smart technologies like HTML5, Ajax and REST will make the phone super interactive and responsive. The CloudPhone will be secure because when it gets stolen everything can be disabled online fast and easy (IMEI number).

The dumb bit pipe will be upgraded to a smart bit pipe and most call handling will be done by cloud servers at the mobile operator. Mobile operators will also take care of the storage of address books and phone settings (again, in the web 2.0 world we already do this) so that we can easily move our profile to a new phone.

It could look like the very interactive interface that Microsoft showed with Windows Phone 7, I actually think MS could pull this off with all their very advanced backend services easily. Some of this they will do in Windows Phone 7 but it will probably be another fat mobile client.

I personally would love to have a full CloudPhone that is always connected. Currently my phone is used for so much more than just making calls, it is really starting to replace my desktop in some areas

Openhanced is announcing the Layar (@layarmobile) starter kit

Posted in: Android, Augmented Reality, Blog, Open Source, iPhone by openhanced on

In the last month we have been working on a complete starter kit for Layar, including: an Open Source backend (multi user level) with supporting database, a GEO spatial search routine and supporting mobile web pages that behave like native apps (Android and iPhone). We will launch this web starter kit in the first week of April and everyone will be able to download the starter kit and install it on a shared or dedicated host.

Now that Layar (@layarmobile) really gains momentum we really want everyone be able to play around with it in an easy way. Right now there are a few solutions out there that support the creation of layars but we wanted to create a full system that can be used by everyone with just a small understanding of PHP and MySQL.

It is just a solution to check out how Layar works and it will not support 3D objects.

Below you can see a few first screenshots of the solution:

backend

mobile web apps.

yes this is the Nexus One

We use the mobile web apps. for providing access to different API’s when executing a layar action, all these actions are related to a nearby selected point. You can think of things like: nearby station, –tweets, –shops etc.

The backend system that we use allows administrators to setup different users that all can add and maintain their own points from within the same database, however, users cannot edit other peoples points.

We will release the solution free of charge and you will have all freedom to install it on your own environment to try it out.

P.S. I want to thank Johannes (@jlapoutre) for his tip on the GEO spatial search.

The Openhanced take on MWC 2010

Posted in: Blog, Mobile by openhanced on February 21, 2010

Just back from MWC 2010 and my head is full of impressions and technology. This was the first time at MWC and probably not the last (next time a little shorter). Can we write down somewhere that the mobile (24) operators agreed on a kind of pact against Apple? It is clear, the mobile operators feel they are missing the AppStore opportunity and have decided to close a pact to bring….. another AppStore. Well, do we need it? I’m not sure if this is innovative, it is just copy cat behavior. There is an incredible gold rush happening right now and it seems everyone wants to build and sell native applications for iPhone but also Android. Interestingly most people I talked to gamble on a consumer application to get rich. To base your business operation on such a gamble is a big risk with a low possibility of success. There are probably only a few hundred developers worldwide that make very good money on consumer applications, that is not much.

I also doubt very much if the native route is the best way. The Gartner Group, but also Google and others, are very clear that mobile web applications is the market that will grow faster. On top of that, it is the only segment that has a kind of standard and that is WebKit and HTML5. The mobile OS war makes one thing clear, there are not many standards and I think that is bad news. If you go native your development team needs to be very skilled in several different languages and developers might be hard to get. WebKit on the other hand seems to be everywhere and the support for HTML5 is a real value. Let’s hope that Microsoft will fully support HTML5 or even decide to roll out WebKit as an option for device manufacturers.

Talking about Microsoft, they really surprised everyone with a very slick demo of Windows Phone 7 Series.

I really think they have done the impossible, redefining the mobile interface again and to me the iPhone suddenly looked old.  However, we still don’t know anything about the core code and other plans. They did not answer any question on the OS, they all save that for Mix 2010.

If we talk about other companies that got attention, we need to mention Google. Lots of Android phones but Google did the ultimate, 1000 developers got a Nexus One for free. And yes, I got one too! Google is dedicated to get attention and the developers behind them.

Overall the MWC event was a good place to meet people from the business but there was one thing I found really annoying, the lack of FREE and reliable WIFI. I must say, a big joke! Next time the organization should fix this!!

And what about the others? Well, saw Samsung Bada OS but they need to get back to the drawing board, not sexy and not interesting.

Luckily this year there was also AppPlanet, by far my favorite spot. All the hardware is nice but in the end it all looks the same and the software makes the difference. I would say a bigger AppPlanet next year!

And yes such a exhibition can make you very tired, sleep well ladies

Cross platform push notifications

Posted in: Blog, Mobile by openhanced on February 9, 2010

I think the iPhone push notifications offer an excellent way to make direct messaging possible between users and it is a shame that this only works on the iPhone (of course, Apple).

However, recently I discovered a few interesting articles on something called MQTT (MQ Telemetry Transport). This is a product developed by IBM and in July 2009 Andy Stanford-Clark from IBM expected it to explode. Well, that obviously did not happen yet

What is MQTT?
The MQTT protocol enables a publish/subscribe messaging model in an extremely lightweight way. It is useful for connections with remote locations where a small code footprint is required and/or network bandwidth is at a premium. For example, it has been used in remote sensors communicating to a broker via satellite.

If you now go to the site you can already see that what Andy predicted did not happen, the latest news is from July 2009.

However, a few people have written solutions around MQTT and it seems to work excellent. Dale Lane has done some work on an Android implementation and he has also written an extensive article on it here.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could easily exchange information between devices (without the overhead of Twitter) cross platform?

Wait a minute, isn’t that what Twitter is doing? Yeah, I guess Twitter can be used for that if the message is 140 characters. However, most Twitter apps. are based on pull.

Use MockApp to design the next killer iPhone application

Posted in: Blog, iPhone by openhanced on February 1, 2010

Dotan Saguy has designed an awesome Powerpoint template to design your next iPhone application.

This is a great idea and let’s hope Android will be supported too soon.

Mobile analytics, everyone jumps on the bandwagon (a list)

Posted in: Blog, Mobile by openhanced on

Mobile analytics has gained attention because recently two companies that do analytics discovered usage of the Nexus One and more recently the iPad. When doing a search on the internet for “mobile analytics” a lot of companies will popup that offer a solution. At Openhanced we try to integrate and test a few of these into our Hybrid Mobile approach. Analytics are important and more companies should use them to exactly pinpoint where to put investments in new technology. Especially related to investing in mobile applications for your Enterprise.

In all these years in IT i’m still surprised by the fact that not many companies monitor usage when new web-, or mobile apps. are deployed. Because of the fact that much software is delayed people are mostly happy when the application finally is deployed, they are glad to have that behind them.

In my opinion this is not a good approach. Why would you invest in features of a product that nobody uses unless it is clear beforehand that the target group is small and they need this functionality.

It looks like measuring mobile sites is booming, there are at least 4 providers:

• Handsetdetection (API);
• Motally (API);
• Mobilytics (API);
• Percentmobile (API);
• Flurry (SDK);
• Localytics (SDK);
• Mixpanel (API).

Mixpanel
This is our favorite right now because it contains custom statistics (define your own). It also has an option to get to the RAW data by using an API.

Update: just as I say this their system is down, it seems they have some problems.

Handsetdetection
This is the first one we discovered and it has some neat features. The one that is interesting is the GEO location information. On top of their analytics they also offer GEO location and that is very useful for web apps. (a web app. cannot touch the GPS). Basically Handsetdetection is an API to determine which device is requesting the mobile site. We use this in a combination with JQTouch to render a web app. to the correct device.

You can see interesting details about carriers but also ISP’s.

Motally
We did not integrate Motally yet but it seems promising. It also has referrer information, something Handsetdetection does not have.

Mobilytics
Not tested yet.

Percentmobile
Invitation requested, not tested yet.

Flurry
This is an API the the form of a SDK. That means it cannot be integrated into a web app. They seem to have a very good reputation.

Localytics
This is also an SDK and we did not test it yet.