At MobileBeat on Thursday
Gregory and Matt invited me to participate in a developer focused pre-event session on Thursday right before MobileBeat 2008 kicks off. The session is going to focus on the evolution of mobile operating systems and services platforms.
It should be interesting, cause in general I think the services platforms are a load of junk, and mobile operating systems are generally moving in the right direction. The services platforms are fundamentally mismanaged and misaligned efforts to try to replicate the success of user generated content from the web and apply it to application development for mobile platforms. Generally they seem to be shiny trinkets to dangle in front of business folks to make them salivate over addressable audiences, but I know of very few successes running on top of any of these platforms.
Compared to say something like GetJar, on which I’ve heard good feedback from both existing businesses and entrepreneurs looking to bootstrap distribution. The iTunes App Store could be the counter example, but I think it’s too early to know for sure. Too bad the iPhone as an overall platform isn’t one that I would pick out as a real boon for developers, generally closed off as it is. Still, everyone seems to fail their saving throw vs. shiny when an iPhone shows up, so they could have at least a sustainable success going there.
Should be a great discussion. If you want to attend make sure to contact Jacob as described in the post. Even if you have a ticket for MobileBeat, this is a different deal. The folks at MobileBeat need to know how many folks are going to drag themselves out of bed for a 9:30am session. This is a developer focused session after all, that’s like 6:30 in the morning in real-people time. Hope to see you there!
