Mike Rowehl: This is Mobility

I already posted this to the MoMo blog, and sent an email out to the mailing list. But for those of you not subscribed to either of those (and I know you’re out there, cause you keep yelling at me for not posting the MoMo events here too), here it is again:

Surj from GigaOm pinged me to pass along some discount codes for the upcoming Mobilize conference on Sept. 10th. The normal cost for the event $545. If you get a ticket before midnight on Sunday here’s a link you can use to register for just $399:

http://mobilize09.eventbrite.com/?discount=MOMOSF399

that code will stop working at midnight on Sunday however, in just a few days. After Sunday you can register with this link to get in for $445:

http://mobilize09.eventbrite.com/?discount=MOMOSF100

Here’s their info about the conference:

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You are in the middle of the mobile data boom. Now make it work for you!

In 2007, mobile data sales in the U.S were $23 billion. In 2009, they’re on target to reach $45 billion. Keep in mind that growth has occurred in just two years — and in the midst of a tough economy. Now imagine if we turn up connection speeds to 100Mbps, then 1Gbps. We believe increased speeds will further expand existing markets.

The much-lauded success of the iPhone, with its 1 billion downloaded apps, is just the tip of an immense iceberg. We believe netbooks and new consumer demand for a wireless web will kindle growth in services, technologies and devices for the communications industry.

Keynotes from Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha and also T-Mobile CTO, Cole Brodman

At Mobilize 09, you will learn about:

• New insights into a future marketplace with gigabit wireless
• Innovating mobile products for your customers
• Strategies for monetization of apps
• Making the most of mobile analytics for mining new profits
• The netbook boom and market needs
• Understanding the future of app delivery stores and distribution
• How social media like Facebook and Twitter are becoming a core service for mobile consumers
• The ideas investors are funding and what they are avoiding

See full speaker lineup and topics on our website at: http://mobilizeconf.com/

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The folks at GigaOm put together fantastic events, I’ve been to quite a few of them. When it comes to mobile stuff in particular they have a fantastic set of knowledge between all the folks there. Check out the schedule:

http://events.gigaom.com/mobilize/09/schedule/

Should be a fantastic event, definitely worth checking out!

Looks like the official cupcake release is delayed a bit I was able to do a manual install of cupcake on my dev phone (Thanks Debajit for the pointers!). Top feature I was looking forward to is the onscreen keyboard. Especially somewhere like the browser, it was always a pain before to have to flip open to type something, flip closed to view, flip, flip, flip. The onscreen keyboard has been working great. Few mistyped letters here and there, but I still do that on my iPod touch as well, so I’m not faulting it that.

Probably the most interesting point from converting over (I’m going to try carrying my Android phone instead of the E71 for the next two weeks and see how that goes) was actually more service than phone. The contacts app has an option to copy contacts off the SIM, but I always have too many phonebook entries for that to work. I run out of storage space on the SIM trying to copy my contacts over.

So what I had done last time was use Funambol to upload my contacts from my S60 phone, and then downloaded the connector app to my G1 to pull down contacts. It worked okay, but some of the data was somewhat munged (most contacts ended up in “last name, first name” format when they came over to the G1, and it just looked ugly). I was going to do that again to sync over the new contacts I have on my Nokia. But then I remembered that Nokia Sync supports S60 now, and decided to give that a try instead. It ended up working out quite well! Once I had my contacts all cleaned up (and now they live in gmail, where I get a lot more use out of them) syncing back to the Nokia seems to work almost as well as syncing from the G1. Have to see how it works over time, but it looks good. Getting S60 supported in Google Sync is a pretty slick move in terms of being able to entice over new users to Android.

One thing that still doesn’t work out quite perfectly for me is the account support. I have a main Gmail address I use for all sorts of personal stuff, and collects a half-dozen of my other email forward currently. It’s where I’m connected to folks on Latitude. Then I have a Google for domains setup for work, and that’s where I store my work emails and my actual calendar. Problem is I can’t get this mix of accounts to work quite the way I want them to. I would like to use email with both inboxes (and default to personal email when other apps are sending by default), I would like calendar to use my apps for domains account, and I would like maps to use my gmail account (I put a little Latitude badge in the sidebar of this blog with a happy little motorcycle zooming around wherever I happen to have last been, I love it!).

So what I’ve ended up with is my main gmail account embedded as the base setting in the phone, and using the browser to access my work email and calendar. Not horribly slick cause I don’t get notifications. However, the browser uses local storage for both calendar and email, so they’re available offline. Unexpected and very welcome! Still, I would love to see multiple account support in the native apps. But I’m going to have to fool around with the browser capabilities in this release. The mobile mail app in the browser is making me drool. Great stuff.

I also downloaded the 1.5 update of the SDK to poke around still. Seems like from the application developer side Android is getting little love. The number of devices in market along with the demographic skew of the audience just don’t make for a compelling target. I’m pretty anxious to see how the upcoming devices shift that however. I’m hearing lots of the old hands from mobile saying that the lack of a formal program to facilitate OEM integrations is a limiting factor in how fast Android can spread. Lots of manufacturers might be interested in it, but they tend to flail around when trying to get projects done with it and have no one to turn to. I’m definitely still rooted in the “cautiously optimistic” camp. The way that should work out with Android is that someone will put together a professional services firm disassociated from Google to help those folks plan and implement their efforts. And I think there’s still plenty of room and time for that to happen.

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After being offline for a while, the Mobile Monday events in the Bay Area have spun back up. We had a fantastic event up in San Francisco in May. Now we’re going to have an event down in Palo Alto on June 1st

. I like the format Kate has put together for these demo events. They’re slide presentations instead of on-device demos. But because the slide decks are merged into one and done from a single laptop it keeps things flowing. A lot fewer of the AV hiccups and no downtime while presenters swap around.

Ewan was at the May event recording and interviewing for Mobile Industry Review , hopefully he’ll be able to make it out for the June event as well. The turnout in general was fantastic, lots of great energy from everyone, tons of folks working on new ideas. Thanks to Skyhook we’re able to have free booze and some swank locations as well, which always makes folks happy. Feels good to be back!

There’s an interesting discussion floating around that a fanatical devotion to iPhone is blinding mobile developers to larger potential markets. And I’m amazed. Really, just freaking flabbergasted, that the conversation could even be taking place. How can anyone seriously say “well, you’re ignoring all those potential millions of handsets out there running Symbian” and keep a straight face? I’ve been working, for years and years. And years and years and years and years, trying to get out to all those handsets, trying to build applications or websites that were able to hit a critical mass of users on all those handsets out there. Or at least enough users to run a profitable business. Lots of us have been trying to.

And generally we’ve been working at it alone. There’s been little help from handset manufacturers, little help from operating system providers, and really no help at all from carriers (though they’ll be very quick to tell you otherwise). Whenever us developers would complain about it or attempt to change the way things worked there was always some excuse about why things aren’t better. We would ask for more capable browsers and the response was that battery life and network constraints make it impossible to create a browser of near desktop capability on a mobile device. We would ask for development tools that would make it easier to get started developing and make it easier to debug and we were told that mobile development is just too complex to try to make it simple. We would ask for a simple payment system that didn’t result in massive checkout dropoff and everyone would just laugh.

The entire system was deadlocked cause no one with the power to was really interested in shaking it up. We kept getting fed excuse after excuse justifying the general lack of forward progress on all fronts. But then something comes along that makes it easy, often profitable, and frequently even fun to develop for mobile again. Apple has exposed the fact that the lack of progress in mobile wasn’t something inherent in the system. That someone with the right motivation can really shake things up and get the train moving again.

So what’s the response from all those players who just got plowed under by Apple, sitting on the sidelines with egg on their faces? They start what sounds quite a bit like a FUD campaign cause they really don’t have any solid ground to stand on any more. Why should I start caring about the Ovi store now? I’ve done Symbian development in the past, I’m familiar with the handset lineup, I have an E71 currently, have been a long time user of Nokia devices, and I know what Ovi is the number of handsets out in the market.

You know what? I still don’t give a crap. And no, I’m not even sorry about not giving a crap. Actually I’m somewhat offended at someone impugning my foresight and knowledge of the market by saying I’m blind to other potentials cause I’m in love with iPhone. I know what’s out there. I’ve been running free events in the Bay Area for more than 5 years now to try to bolster the mobile community when nothing else would. I’ve been working in the industry for about three times as long. I’ve developed for just about every platform, and I know the ecosystem extremely well. It’s not that I’m blind to everything else. I know everything else that’s out there, and because of that I’ve chosen to develop for iPhone.

Stop lying to yourselves, and definitely stop lying to us. Is the Nokia store supposed to challenge Apple? Or Microsoft supposed to? Or RIM? You know what folks, you had your chances. If you want to impress me, if you want me to start developing for your platforms again, get your houses in order. Once things change, once you get your stores developed, released, and proven as a good commercial channels to end users – then we can talk again. Until then we’re all just going to keep laughing at you and developing for iPhone.download dragon tiger gate divx