Mike Rowehl: This is Mobility

Just happened across some notes from Dave Harper’s talk at MobileCampNYC, some great stuff in there:

If it doesn’t work on 1 billion phones, don’t bother with it. No rich media experience, all through the browser.

RSS is an easy transport mechanism for a shared experience, not just for personal feed reading. Start with some content via RSS and add community and sharing.

Next version of Winksite is already built on major standards: MobileOK, dotMobi Ready Report happy, generates mobile sitemaps automatically.

The broadband world doesn’t have a grasp of how much activity there is in the mobile world. Realigning around helping the wired world discover whats out there in the mobile world.

At Winksite playing the role of introducing the online world to the mobile world led to problems, social problems as well as general web problems. People causing trouble in chat rooms, harassing each other.

Winksite didn’t want to be big brother, but by providing the introductory service it forced them into that role. The “report abuse” link is being used by people to report physical and sexual abuse, not just abuse of the service.

I love it when stuff like this happens, apparently folks in Africa are working around a lack of support from banks to create mobile payment systems based on trading minutes of airtime. Fantastic! A few more insights like this and they’ll have their mobile business models well lubricated enough that they should be able to rocket by us in terms of innovation. I’m hoping that something of the sort would prove to be enough of a smack in the face to get things really kicked up here in the “developed world”. If not, I could just move to Africa. I’ll have to get a pith helmet so that I’ll be ready, just in case.

Juka Pusa - Nokia

advantages - personal, interactive, context dependent. Web servers just need a little love.

technology - S60 3rd edition devices, python, mod_python, apache, http

mobile device. get your own domain name when you register.

differences between Raccoon and MWS - MWS is divided open and closed, original content source code is not available, but there are example python content applicatinos that can be used as a basis for new apps.

This is the first time theyre taking about it in public, not available yet. It will be at mymobilesite.net

key features - every website has its own domain, MWS settings managed in the UI, appearance of site defined through browser, gateway can block unwanted visitors, access identities are based on contacts, you can give user accounts and groups access to your web applications, when your site is unreachable a message is shown to the visitor, you can edit the message in the MWS settings.

MWS applications - welcome page, blog, gallery to share images, camera to send live images, guestbook, messaging to allow people to send you messages, calendar, send SMS from the web using your device as sender, phone log, contacts.

demo.mymobilesite.net is up whenever Juka isn’t on a plane.

Decided to go with a mixed open and closed model so that it could be made a little more consumer friendly, secure, operationally friendly.

1-800-goog-411

What kind of successful speech applications are out there. TellMe, Asterisk.

Speech interfaces not representing the low end. Letting people self service. TellMe is priced up too high. If Google wants to do something they should offer a low cost per minute service, pre-paid. SIP based for example.

Voice application gadgets, drag and drop the same way that the google homepage is. For instance voice search of NYC restaurants.

Rich brought up the point of initiation time. Push to talk for voice services. Better to call a friend. (But Google is your friend!). Asynchronous. Voice is cool, but better to not happen over the phone. Different transport. TellMe CEO has a call open all the time, like a conf call to a session on all the time. Wildfire? I haven’t seen that, could be worth checking out.

goog-411 uses VoiceXML.

Noise is a big problem, not a big problem. There doesn’t seem to be an agreement about that.

Mention of multimodal, voice and web, simultaneous.

Amount of voice presence huge, sms big, data not really there. Even with all the installs that google has gotten for its apps, the numbers aren’t significant.

what you need - VUI (voice UI, VoiceXML), Grammars (top movies, neighborhoods), community.

IMS (IP Multimedia System)? not there might never be there. complicated and ambitious. No real deployments yet.

What is the equivalent of text advertising in voice applications? Sponsored listings?

translation service. call something and say “ask this guy where the nearest restroom is in chinese”, and then pass the phone to him.

Private acoustic models, especially for people with accents.

machine learning, be able to correct the system and have it learn from that.

pick up stress level, emotion, feelings. So that you can pick up some additional context. That’s one already that acts as a lie detector.

I got together some notes about traffic growth techniques while I was on the plane.

Getting stuff done on a plane is always a pain in the ass. Sure, I’ve got the laptop and an extra battery, but actually using it on the plane, especially with the person in front of you reclining, is just about impossible. And I’m about to spend quite a long time on the plane this weekend. I could use it to “detach” for a while, as multiple people have recommended I should do. They’re obviously insane.

So instead I have tried to make a plane friendly system that I can use to do a little hackery and work on some notes without having to contort myself too much. Russ had lent me a bluetooth keyboard to try out with the 770 a while ago, and it was brilliant. So I Amazoned myself a Think Outside Stowaway bluetooth keyboard cause of course I had no idea where they would stock such a thing (I tried CompUSA, Fry’s and Best Buy). Tada!

Should make an excellent device for the trip. I have xterm, python, a PDF viewer and a backlog of papers I’ve been meaning to read, VIM, and 3 gig of storage. The battery the n800 uses is the same one as the 770 did, so I have an extra battery. And what a stroke of luck, it’s the same battery that the E61 uses as well! So I have three batteries all together that if I leave with them charged up I can use in the N800. In flight wifi would rock, but hey, I’ll take what I can get.

I’m going to be heading out for the day to MobileCampNYC! If I’m a fan of any large group of people, it’s an unconference. An unconference about mobile even better! And since I never keep my mouth shut about anything even when I’m supposed to, I figured I should prep some kind of presentation or session of some kind to give my ranting some focus.

I could of course talk advertising, but given the day job I never have to plan to talk about mobile advertising, it always just seems to come up ;-) I could talk about Linux systems and open platforms (I have a few Linux devices, including a Greenphone, which I’ll make sure to haul out for folks to play with), but even though I play with that stuff a lot, I’m not steeped in it every day and I’m not sure I would really consider myself an expert at it any more.

So instead I’m thinking “Growing Traffic for your Mobile Website”. It gives me a chance to spout off about the stuff I dig around in every day, but at the same time doesn’t make me look like a total tool by just towing the corporate line. And there’s a lot of interesting stuff in there. From how to monitor and track the usage of the site, webmaster tools, search engine behavior, and discoverability to bookmarking and sharing.

I was feeling like I just don’t spend enough time with mobile Linux recently. So I updated the Ubuntu install on my laptop and set out to install Maemo. Ended up having a bunch of problems though. If you’re looking to get the maemo SDK installed under Ubuntu 7.04 keep in mind that the nsswitch config under scratchbox needs some tweeking apparently.

In further news about the continuing effort to dupe people into believing that crippling hindrances to their free will are actually good for them, HBO had proposed changing the name of DRM. Perfect! Of course, Digital Consumer Enablement is a much more accurate term than Digital Rights Management. “Enable” means almost the same thing as “restriction”, right? Perfectly logical.

I wonder if this works in other areas? If you’re planning to be in the same room with Bob Zitter I recommend bringing a pillowcase full of doorknobs and knocking him silly with it. Because obviously “heavy sack beating” isn’t the right way to describe the event, it’s more accurately captured by the term “Content Provider Attitude Realignment”. I just don’t want to use the term “heavy sack beating” any more, and obviously this opens up new applications with content providers in other areas as well.

Russ and I discussing Tumblr. I would cut and paste the conversation here, but I’m afraid space/time might collapse on itself if I did.