Toluu

Dan's Blog (2.0)

Musings on technology, the Web, mobility and beyond

Mobile 2.0 and Mobile Tech for Social ChangeOctober 8

First of all, for the third year in a row, I’m running (along with Mike Rowehl, Gregory Gorman, Rudy de Waele and Peter Vesterbacka) Mobile 2.0, a “one-day event focusing on new Mobile Applications and Services, the Mobile Web and Disruptive Mobile Innovation.”

The event will be held on November 3rd and will once again be taking place at the Grand Hyatt off of San Francisco’s Union Square.

This year we have some really fantastic speakers and panelists and we’re also trying something slightly different: running a “builder track” in the afternoon, along-side our regular track, that will focus on hands-on mobile development, user experience and design. That track will feature mini-tutorial sessions on topics such as Gears Mobile, Nokia Web Runtime, Yahoo! blueprint, iPhone web development and mobile user experience and design topics (with a focus on case studies). This is all in line with my view that when it comes to mobile innovation, it is time to stop talking about it and start doing it.

Registration is now open, so reserve your seat today by visiting http://mobile2event.com. Full program will also be posted soon.

On the next day, November 4th, against the back-drop of the U.S. election, I’ll be helping to run a bar-camp type event focusing on how mobile technology is being used as a lever of social change. This is a topic that I’ve been working at the fringes of for some time. I’m very

Mobile Web Apps will Beat Native AppsOctober 6

Since upgrading my iPhone to the 2.0 software, I’ve dived into Apple’s app store and I’ve been making a point of trying out apps from across the store but focusing on content creation tools (such as the excellent Wordpress app which I’m using to write this post). At the same time, I’ve continued to make use of all the great iphone webapps and mobile Web sites I’ve come to know and love. Increasingly, across many platforms (not just iPhone) application developers and content providers will  face this choice: to build a webapp or to build a native app. There are advantages to both approaches, and some work that’s just getting started that I believe will significantly change the face of mobile development over the next 2 years.

The rush of content and application developers to develop iPhone apps has been impressive and somewhat predictable. The app store is the next big thing. Google, Microsoft and others are now jumping on the bandwagon (probably much to the dismay of the folks at Handango who can rightly claim they’ve been doing an app store since before app stores were cool). Many of the apps in the Apple app store are really good and could not (currently) be written as web apps because they either take advantage of device capabilities (such a location) or because they need direct access to graphics or sound capabilities (3D gaming) not available to the browser engine. However - discounting this need to access the

Zipiko: A Great WebApp that Could be Even BetterSeptember 9

Zipiko Screenshot

I’ve recently been trying out Zipiko, a very simple but powerful social tool for organizing events and ad-hoc get-togethers. Zipiko has a really good mobile Web UI through which you can develop your network by inviting friends to events via their phone numbers. Your friends get an SMS which they can respond to with a simple “YES” or “NO” to let you know if they’re coming or not. Unlike some mobile Web apps comming onto the market, Zipiko seems to realize that not everyone lives in the United States and has thankfully enabled international phone numbers - thanks!

Zipiko is an example of a really great mobile Web app: it’s simple, it’s well designed, it’s well suited to the mobile use case and it integrates well with text messaging. Unfortunately it does NOT work well with low-spec browsers. I tested it on iPhone and on Windows Mobile (mobile IE) where it seemed to work well. On Blackberry (my “low bar” for mobile browsers) it was a disaster.

But what really struck me was how much better Zipiko could be if had access to device capabilities and information stored in your device. Instead of asking me to type in the phone numbers

Mobile Widgets in AustinAugust 4

I’m very excited to announce that on September 7th I will be co-presenting, with my friend and fellow Mobile Monday organizer C. Enrique Ortiz, a Barcamp-style event in Austin, Texas! The event will focus on mobile widgets and we are looking to bring in presenters and participants from all across the spectrum of companies and industry efforts involved in this burgeoning space. The event will feature a mix of structured and unstructured time, with both a program of speakers (to be announced but including speakers from OMTP and W3C) and an open schedule on which participants can write in their own sessions. If you’d like to attend, just put your name on the wiki (see link above). If you’d like to present in one of the pre-programmed slots, please get in touch with myself of Enrique.

What will be the Model T of the Mobile Web?July 24

I’ve been following with some interest the press surrounding the 100th anniversary of the Model T, the original “people’s car” that is credited with creating the automative industry as we now know it. The Model T is famous for a number of reasons, but one thing I hadn’t quite appreciated was how versitile and extensible (to use a modern word) the car was. A whole after-market industry grew up around the T, letting people transform it into sports car, a truck, a tractor, a harvester - whatever task required motive power. This factor of openness and extensibility, combined with mass-production and low cost, helped to make the car a success story and created a new industry. The slightly more modern equivelent might be the IBM PC. But this left me wondering: what is the mobile computing equivelent to the Model T? What is the Model T of the mobile Web? Though I love it, I have to say the iPhone ain’t it. It fails on both the low cost and the extensibility criteria. The OLPC device fails on mass-market grounds.

What we need is for someone to come along and deliver a mass-market, low-cost device that is extensible and open but which has enough ease and simplicity of use that it is embraced by the great public and enough oomph to be a mobile Web workhorse. There is a gigantic vacuum in