What do you do when no one takes your mobile product platform and creates a truly useful, mass market focused, standalone application? Create your own and tie it into one of your own existing internet services like Photoshop.com! According to Bill Perry, the Flash Lite application will allow users to upload, share, and view photos via supported mobile supported devices. Read more about it here.
This is cool, no doubt , however far from a killer app. Especially since sharing your photos from a mobile phone to services such as Flickr, Ovi, insert your cloud based photo service here, has been around and easy for a while now. I think Nokia really has it right with integrating this with the camera application directly.
The other part of this story (and the real win in my opinion) is that they are releasing it first to non-typical Flash Lite devices such as Palm and Windows Mobile (instead of the old faithful S60 devices). Open Screen Project’s main initiative is to get on as many screens/devices as possible. And the fact that they’re adding Palm show’s they’re putting their money where their mouth is.
Now if the devices group can use this as a momentum piece and build some more tie-in’s to their own products or even third-party services, I think they can really go places. It’s an excellent strategy in creating a viable model that other companies can mimic.
I give them props for originality and some courage for trying something new. I love it when the host (Arnold Faber) looks completely dis-interested, puzzled, and excited all at the same time when hearing the difference between Symbian and C++. Miika looks like a member of the 80’s metal band Europe, and trust me, I mean that as a total compliment. Faber looks like a sleazy porn director.
So what’s the strategy here? Getting heavy hitters like Miika in to talk to what I’m assuming is a hired actor, to speak about the virtues of N-gage in a towel? I know there’s an effort here to appeal to the gaming community but if I was the product manager I might want to put a little more rigor and context around what the message is here. If they’re trying to get the word out on why game publishers may want to get on board, some data, tutorials, or case studies might be better.
Or maybe I’m just getting old. Can’t wait to see the next one.
Something occurred to me when Alessandro notified the Boston Adobe Mobile and Devices User Group meeting of an upcoming meet-up at a local bar. In the past there was always a lot of great conversation had, wouldn’t it be great to capture that and offer it to the world-wide community? Well that’s what we did last night at the Green Briar Pub in Brighton, Mass. Here’s a loose list of subject matter:
- Verizon Dashboard
- Adobe Open Screen Project
- Various others: Nokia as an internet company, Flash on the iPhone, Kunerlite
Keep in mind that this is the first podcast I’ve ever produced, MC’d, etc.. so I think we’ll only do better next time we do this, hopefully soon!
Here you go… a free reader for any Flash Lite 1.1 enabled handset. This is based in part from Alessandro’s tutorial with some extra bells and whistles thrown in. The app uses php to return the xml and pushes to the the post url via your devices browser.
It was a snap to throw together. Too bad I can’t even test it on my N95 8gb because of a bug in the pre-installed Flash Lite player, but it works good on my Nokia 5300.
Keep your eye out in the next week or so for my Nokia WRT version. I’ll put together a comprehensive comparison of that when it’s done. In the meantime, enjoy!
I got on the beta for Skyfire for S60 devices and after trying it out, it’s pretty impressive. This is huge; I could actually get the Flash 9 elements on my website for the time on my mobile phone. Wonder if they are using some sort of re-writing technology for that. Skyfire really in some ways trumps other mobile browsers with Flash 9, Quicktime, and other proprietary plugin support. Performance was decent on my N95 8gb though I did experience a crash or two, but that’s why it’s still in beta right?
A couple of annoying things about it. It requires you to put in your email and password every time you use it. So if you mis-type or your connection is flaky you get booted out. Not cool and not a great experience for a beta. Since it’s supposed to stay free, hopefully the authentication part of it will be automatic or go away in future releases.
So how does it measure up against the pre-installed Nokia Browser or the iPhones Apple’s Safari? Pretty good. The product borrows Steve Jobs line as being “the real web” on your handset, and in many ways it is. But Safari really beats it in terms of performance and usability so far. I’d point out that it sees to use a similar zooming method in rendering and rasterizing portions of web pages like Safari does. I’m biased toward the Nokia browser which is really due for an update, but we’ll see where that product evolves going forward.
All in all, I still find mobile browsing awkward in general. It’s a combination of UI issues, IA challenges, and a lack of proper screen real-estate that holds things back in my book. I still prefer Mippin as a portal for most of my news and general web browsing. But I hope to see Skyfire out of beta and out there on more mobiles going forward.
Okay, on a break from the regular mobile, business, and other mumbo jumbo, it’s time to talk about one of my other passions, sports. Okay I did slip mobile in there but it’s tough to get off track sometimes.
Truth is, I haven’t seen much out there. Even ESPN’s mass market mobile offering via the web is pedestrian at best. So far the best network quality mobile experience I’ve seen for sports is on the Verizon LG Voyager. The pre-installed ESPN MVP application is great, the UI is fantastic and the video? Top notch thanks to 3G networks. But you have to be a Verizon customer with a specific Brew headset to benefit. I get it, that’s your differentiator as a business competitor to lure more customers in your direction. But what about a carrier independent rich mobile destination? If one of the networks (or anyone for that matter) can pull it off and push it through a mobile browser or widget-base thus avoiding all the licensing fees to carriers, it’ll change the game completely. Of course it’s just a matter of time until the technology allows for this but this could be a big opportunity for an independent to enter the game in a new channel. Just think of ESPN or CNN when cable was a fledgling business and look at them now.
And speaking of sports, I have to mention my Galway football club.This is my first year of retirement and it’s been tough to walk away. At times this summer, I’m fine with sitting it out with a cold Magners in my hand, screaming, shouting, being the club-man. But the Brett Farve part of me wants to get back out there and bust some heads. Of course I’m not getting any younger and I did have a pretty bad injury at the end of last year. To give you an idea of the roughness of gaelic football, the video below would sum it up as a typical game out in Canton.
The fight between Nokia and Qualcomm ended before it started. The two sides said they have agreed to drop all legal complaints against each other in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. This effectively ended a costly legal fray for both sides, negatively affecting both parties current and long term business.
Who really wins here? Qualcomm’s stock price went through the roof today so you could argue that they did. But Nokia will benefit from the lower license cost (at half a billion mobile handsets per year, every cent counts) not to mention that carriers, U.S. ones in particular, can put this behind them in choosing which manufacturers to partner with.
I was able to test out Nokia Sports Tracker on my run last weekend. The application is free and works with several S60 GPS enabled handsets. It allows you to broadcast your progress live through data services as well as build a work-out diary that you can use to set goals and bench-marks for improvement.
You can see from my workout posted above, I lost my GPS connection a few times (no I can’t run 98kmh!) but all in all it did a great job. After using it with some success, there are two things that come to mind which would be great improvements:
A device specific arm-band: It’s not easy to find a store that carries the N95 let alone any accessories for it. For my initial run I had my phone in-hand which is no good, because I’ll eventually drop it if I keep doing that. There is a lot of useful data that is visualised when you’re in-run (elevation, time, etc..) so you would need an arm-band with use on the go in mind. If anyone knows of one let me know.A heart-rate monitor: Right now I use a basic run of the mill Polar watch and heart-monitor strap. A lot of the gear I use in my gym has Polar compatibility built-in and it would be a great feature to have in SportsTracker. It would be interesting if Nokia released a work-out centered hand set and marketed it toward sports and excercise customer segments, sort of the way Nike does with the iPod. Even with Nike’s limited success, there’s a niche market there that has yet to be exploited to it’s full potential and it’s clear that Nokia sees this.
Believe it or not I hate running and only do so grudgingly to stay fit, but I’m looking forward to my next run and shaving off a few minutes. Feel free to watch along!
According to Engadget Samsung just announced the SGH-L870, a Symbian device which includes… wait for it… the Safari mobile browser. Safari is based on Webkit just like numerous other browsers, including the S60 Browser.
If true, this represents a significant effort by Apple to break into new segments of the market where they have lacked presence on mobile hardware other then the iPhone. This would be a smart move as it’s clearly no longer a 2-3 player desktop only game (Mac, Windows, Linux) for software platforms as mobile platforms continue to gain marketshare. Not to mention the Safari browser has considerable name and brand props that the S60 Browser lacks as I went over in this post.
But sorry, I just don’t buy this. I’m going out on a limb and calling this news as lost in translation. It just is too unlike Apple and I just don’t see Symbian playing nice with another Web-kit browser when they already offer a great one, which by the way supports video and Flash where Safari mobile does not.
An Evening with S60 lands in Boston on Thursday June 5th from 8 PM to 10:30 PM at The Living Room. This all part of Dan Shugrue’s grass-roots marketing campaign to help get the word out to the general population on how open and cool S60 is. There is also the S60 Ambassador program for folks who are looking to enfranchise the public in return for some free Nokia product and accessories.
In other S60 news, AllAboutSymbian has released their latest podcast touching on N-Gage, Maps, and Apple’s impending 3G iPhone release. I’ve been listening to Rafe, Ewan, Stefan, and Steve for awhile now and this podcast series is a must listen for anyone into Symbian and mobile in general.
