Going Mobile

June 13, 2008 | Comments

Bryan has put another one of his cracking presentations online: "Going Mobile - A Pragmatic Look At Mobile Design" is available from SlideShare here.

Mobile Web 2.0: Two Tribes or One World?

June 12, 2008 | Comments

Mobile Web 2.0: Two Tribes or One World?

Panel discussion on "sharing content between web 2.0 and the Mobile Web 2.0 experience" with

Professor Ed Candy, Chief Technology Officer, 3 Group

Kai-Joachim Boyd, Senior Manager Strategy and Development, Telefonica O2 Europe

Anil Malhotra, SVP Marketing & Alliances, Bango

Josep Aliagas, CEO, Arena Mobile
Mathieu Saccharin, Head of Web 2.0 & UGC services, Bouygues Telecom

Bena (moderator) talks about Taptu encouraging sharing of web sites between friends.

EC: the opportunity is to go beyond Web 2.0 and improve on what we get on the fixed web. Scrap the type of UI we have today and go analogue. The digital watch face failed and now we use analogue watches: it'll be the same for mobile UI. Mouse-and-cursor is a very analogue experience. Scrap open source: everyone claims to be open, but they're all different and the term is becoming meaningless. OMTP is doing some good stuff to work towards "sameness" - OSs don't need to be identical, they just need to agree on common points.

MS: You can't even share content between mobile and mobile today, never mind mobile and PC.

KB: We need to offer converged services. We're preparing our customers for a seamless experience.

AM: Sharing has always been a driver for internet usage; look at early content-free web pages which were sets of links. Mobile will define how web content is produced eventually (as in Korea/Japan).

Bena: How would you promote social sharing? O2 have partner tariffs, Wii have online play.

Bena: Is sharing going to be the key for social networking?

AM: Some similar things to fixed internet. We've let individuals create personal WAP pages on wap.com, to let users open up their own content to each other.

Audience: Is content important? Isn't 2.0 more about communication?

AM: The 2.0 services which work well on mobile have content at their core (do they?).

EC: When we started 3, we built a service-independent network to let us distribute content. Initially we created menus of content for customers - and no-one came. When we started to do X-Series products, which encouraged users to do what they wanted to do, we saw an explosion in traffic. The ones which worked best were the ones which established a level of communication first, then encouraged content sharing: these are my friends, my family, and now I'd like to share my photos with them.

Go see this

June 12, 2008 | Comments

Quadratura are doing an event in London in June. Go see their showreel, it looks amazing. Mr BigFug does lovely things with light :)

(and guitars)

Cell IDs, location and Google

June 11, 2008 | Comments

So, Google has 'fessed up how they've been building their database of cell IDs. Apple use such a database of cells to location-enable the iPhone v1 mapping applications; whilst the spangly new iPhone has onboard GPS to improve accuracy in this respect, I've found cell ID to be extremely useful when combined with a decent map.

And for the rest of us, there are stirling efforts like OpenCellID to help build an open database of cell ID to lat/long mappings... with a nice downloadable client to let those of us with GPS-enabled phones to contribute.

Calling Mobile Designers...

June 11, 2008 | Comments

We're looking for a Senior Designer to join our in-house design team. Here's the job spec in pure job-speak:

"Based from our offices in central Brighton, you'll work closely with our customers, our development team and third party suppliers to define and build delightful mobile software products. Commercial experience of mobile design and an absolute passion for the medium will be essential, as will strong interaction design skills and a solid understanding of the technical constraints of the medium. Externally you'll be representing us to the design community; internally you'll be responsible for honing and refining our approach and techniques.

Future Platforms is an 8-year old UK software business employing 14 members of staff. We live by the seaside and build delightful mobile products for a diverse range of clients. In the last year we've worked on customising handset themes for Nokia, mobile social software for Trutap, concept development for Channel 4, won a place on the BBC Innovation Labs scheme, and helped Discovery US viewers hunt ghosts across America.

Email a CV and covering letter to recruitment@futureplatforms.com if you're interested.

Truly, madly, deeply, no agencies please. Really, please don't"

That last bit about agencies is so important. Every time I post a job ad I get inundated by calls from agencies, write down their names, and resolve never to use them.