Paul Golding: Ideas

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 11:55:34 GMT

@ If you're still reading this....

...you shouldn't be. Your browser should have been redirected to my new blog

http://wirelesswonders.blogspot.com/

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:29:00 GMT

@ Running on air...

As someone who does a bit of running to keep fit, I can testify to the psychological importance of measuring one's performance. Most of the time, I feel the need to time my runs. Of course, I am looking for improvement, or at least consistency.

I am also interested to know how far I have run. With a friend from Motorola, I brain-stormed possible measuring apparatus for precision distance measurement. Most of the time, we gravitated toward optical measurement solutions using cameras, akin to the way an optical mouse works.

I was intrigued to find out about a pair of training shoes, I think by Nike, that include a microprocessor. I instantly assumed this was for such measurements, but it turns out to be a real-time controller for pumping goo around the sole of the shoe to adjust damping. I did think this might prove useful, with some kind of bio-feedback, to help avoid injuries.

It seems that Philips/Nike have now addressed the measurement problem. As one might expect, the solution is also an entertainment device, centred on music - or audio, playback. MP3 of course, hence the name, MP3Run. Fantastically, the sensor that straps on the shoe, communicating via Bluetooth back to the main arm- or body-strapped unit, uses 2D accelerometers to do the sensing. As a user of an air-mouse, I have an enthusiasm for these groovy sensors, so I was enthused by their use in this application.

Just take a read of Philip's whitepaper about the device to appreciate the processing power of the solution:

When the player is used for the first time, the runner does not necessarily have to input information on aspects such as length of stride beforehand. The sensor on the shoe measures 1000 times per second acceleration/deceleration of each stride using a 2 dimensional acceleration sensor. This information is used by a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) to re-construct the actual gait and be finally able to give precise information about momentary speed and hence distance.

That’s what I called a usable system, at least on paper. No messing with stride measurements and the usual pedometer configurations – just strap, listen and run. Or, at least, I hope it isn’t listen, run and strap, after tripping on a kerb whilst fiddling with the controls. Let’s wait and see. I think I’m in the market for one of these goodies. Due out in August.

Now, how can we combine this unit with Spatial Messaging solutions? I'm thinking on that one......

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 10:38:50 GMT

@ Mobile Location Spam...

There is a lot of excitement about the potential of location-based services. All kinds of applications are being dreamt up, but what they have in common is interrupting the user with a message when they enter into a zone of interest. The problem is how to set up rules sufficiently intelligent that the messages received are actually wanted, or useful. Clearly, careful opt-in schemes are one solution, but rather crude. This option denies the genuine possibility of receiving useful information without expressly signing up for it.

Opt-in is really a defence mechanism, not an information filter. In a "whole product" seamless information experience, one might argue that "the system" ought to know what I'm interested in and send me useful stuff without me asking for it. In other words, opt-in is clumsy.

Intelligent push of location-sensitive information requires an agent that understands our interests and habits. This requires a wider scope than just retailing. Someone interested in archaeology might be willing to receive information about important sites as they drive past. If this sounds mundane (“I don’t want that...”), the trick is to ponder on which convergence of information and spatial contexts would interest you. Experience of giving many courses in this area has taught me that everyone eventually comes up with not just one, but many such contexts that suit them.

Nonetheless, spam is still a real problem. In the email world, it is potentially a killer for wireless email without effective defences. Any wireless email solution has to include spam-defence as a must-have, in addition to a variety of other context sensitive filters, adjusting content by the moment, movement, and for “me” (as discussed in my book).

In Europe, the law is clear that mobile push advertisement services must be explicit opt-in. In the US, similar legal trends are emerging, following on the heels of the CAN-SPAM edict against email spamming. Brian McWilliams describes a lawsuit filed last month by Verizon against 50 unidentified “John Does” who are spamming mobiles.

Clearly, a strong legal deterrent is useful, but we need to tread carefully. How do we cater for intelligent location-based advertising? For example, would it be legally justifiable to say, “I knew that Joe Soap was interested in buying a new Mazda (from his web surfing 3rd party cookies - see previous post), which is why I sent the message”? Is it a variation on the “open gate” invitation to the front door in UK case law?

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 00:21:20 GMT

@ Cookies - Spyware - Mobilisation

In my course "Complete Anatomy of a Wireless Application", I have begun exploring the potential of 3rd party cookies for mobile services. There seems to be a plethora of possibilities.

Cookies get used to store information about your browsing sessions. Information you view, sites you visit, ads you click....all this is potentially trackable with cookies.

One of the most interesting possibilities is using cookies to understand what a user is currently "up to", especially in terms of shopping interests, and then to tie this in with location-sensitive advertising, (not "spamming") and information services.

I am more intrigued by the potential seamlessness of the experience. That we could go out into public spaces and enjoy a continuum of our home broadband environment. Our information grazing habits on the home PC (and work one, possibly) would be reflected in our information views and interruptions generated by our mobile devices.

Whilst we are tempted to think of spam at this point and annoying mobile coupons from the nearest coffee shop, there is no need to assume that an external agent is mining our data and interrupting us with their ads. I think that increasingly, companies will realise that they have to broadcast their essential real-time data through Web Services channels on the Internet. For example, B&Q will have to broadcast all their current offers, every day, 24*7, via Web Services channels. My smart mobile device will subscribe to these channels and pick up any interesting products that might be meaningful to me, given my recent grazing habits. If I've been looking at the prices of fitted showers, then info on this topic will be siphoned from the B&Q Web Services channel, especially, or only, when I get near one of their stores.

Seamlessness is the key: context-dependent information delivery on the mobile device, which takes into account all my current info-grazing habits. Cookies on websites is just one possible way of doing this, but there are plenty of others that will become more apparent as we get nearer to a true "anywhere area network". From a recent experience with a class, one student came up with the idea of a shared shopping list application. The idea itself was interesting enough, but I have not been able to drop the concept ever since it was raised. Shopping is something most of us do regularly and with all kinds of emotional, physical and financial investments. It seems so obvious as a candidate to bring this activity completely into the digital, and mobile, world. I can already think of so many benefits, especially using mobile technology, that will be hard to let go off once we become habituated to putting our shopping lists into the digital domain......

....watch this space for more thoughts on the topic.

Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:27:43 GMT

@ WHOLE PRODUCT DESIGN....

How are we going to cross the chasm from techno-gadgetry to mass consumption whilst still not designing decent mobile services? We need "ENTIRE PRODUCT" design, not just itty-bitty applications that provide a function that no one can get to because the rest of the environment doesn’t allow it.

For example, take wireless email. Is the product "Wireless POP3 access to my mail server???" ABSOLUTELY NOT….this is not a product…this is a facility. If the interface sucks, then we can't get to this facility….if the air-interface is unreliable…we can't get to this facility…if we can't easily enter email addresses….we can't get to this facility….we need a WHOLE PRODUCT….not a facility.

Most "wireless email" solutions are still this bad....the Motorola v600 has an IMAP client with zero filtering. On GPRS, that means....sit and wait for ages poking buttons, enduring delays, until you get to the message you actually want. Why's it called messaging when it takes so much effort to get the message?

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 01:05:59 GMT

:: Is this the future ? ::

http://www.tapwave.com/zodiac.html

It's a mobile games device. It's got Bluetooth, which makes it interesting. It's also built on a Palm OS platform, which means any Palm app will run on it too. It would make an interesting platform for Visual Radio, although it lacks built-in cellular. Alternatively, what about a portable video player - http://www.iriveramerica.com/products/pmp-120.aspx.

I think these devices are not quite getting it right. Any portable device must be worth carrying. What compels someone to carry something around with them? In my opinion, it’s interruption that matters. The device must interrupt the user to grab his/her attention, preferably by receiving messages. What they say, and who sends them, is another matter – but messaging is a paradigm essential to portable devices.

Wed, 07 Jul 2004 17:21:03 GMT

:: Nokia Visual Radio ::

Recently on the Mobile Applications Club at Ecademy there was a group discussion about device types. Barbara Ballard states:

.. I foresee (and intend to make happen) a plethora of devices that step outside the current phone/PDA/pager/game device taxonomy. I envision a future in which everybody has a general purpose "communications and control" device (exact feature set and design varies per segment), a general purpose computing/work device (again, exact feature set varies), and an "entertainment" device.

The taxonomies suggested could be argued, but I think the idea is valid. The current mobile industry is voice-centric and devices have evolved accordingly. Text messaging has not impacted device evolution at all - it is an additional feature of what remains a telephone. Notwithstanding a variety of service issues (including price) the fact that MMS is struggling suggests that it is possibly the wrong service for a communications device. Perhaps the better use for MMS is within an entertainment framework, which brings me to the entertainment device category.

Nokia are promoting their visual radio platform, which allows visual and interactive content to be received by special devices that receive FM radio. Nokia call these devices "media devices". This seems a clear attempt to create a new device family and certainly seems to confirm Barbara's thinking that the future of user interface design will be affected by the emergence of classes of devices leading to design strategies per class, rather than per device.

Of course, there is the issue of adoption. Without enough radio stations signing up to provide content into the parallel visual channels, the adoption rate might be problematic. However, this assumes that the only possibility is augmented FM radio. There is nothing to stop niche channels being created that are entirely digital. For example, I would propose that the in-store "Blockbuster TV" in Blockbuster video stores might make an ideal channel. A whole range of products could be offered: postal DVD rentals, retail DVD sales, film-related ringtones, wallpaper etc.

There is also no reason why visual-shopping services can't be so niche as to allow retailers to provide services for device users actually visiting a shop. I can't interact with the Blockbuster TV in the store, but with a suitable device, I could. The same goes for any other shop, whether they currently run in-store channels or not. Technologies like Cell Broadcast could be used to allow users to quickly "tune in" to nearby stores. Regardless of such enhancements, what's important is a device type design for this type of service and that any content provider can confidently design for.

It is currently my view that the emergence of entertainment devices will be the most likely business evolution for operators. Last on their list will be support for a general-purpose mobile computing industry.

Wed, 07 Jul 2004 17:20:50 GMT

:: Nokia Visual Radio ::

Recently on the Mobile Applications Club at Ecademy there was a group discussion about device types. Barbara Ballard states:

Mon, 19 Apr 2004 11:58:46 GMT

:: Social networking with Bluetooth ::

Recently, there was an interesting thread running on the mobile applications club at Ecademy. It was about proximity sensing using Bluetooth in order to assist social networking at a networking event. This is an idea that frequently circulates in various circles and one of my favourite examples for illustrating various aspects of peer-to-peer (P2P) services.

I thought it would be useful to blog a couple of interesting ideas from the discussion. Firstly, there is no need to utilise proximity sensing at a networking event, because via some kind of registration it is possible to know who is present at the event. We can imagine the event as being like a potential IM conversation, in which case the registration at the front desk is the "I'm online" announcement (or "I'm here"). Some kind of profile matching process on the backend could subsequently notify a present networker about a match.

Secondly, all the messaging could be done via SMS, which allows the service to be reached by most attendees (pending cellular coverage issues of course). However, notifications could also be made using Bluetooth, via Bluejacking possibly, using networked phones or a dedicated Bluetooth hotspot appliance.

There are so many ways to implement a social-networking solution and more than likely, a hybrid, or multi-modal approach will make most sense, combining BT, SMS and WAP.

[P.S. In terms of rapid prototyping of Bluetooth ideas, it is supposedly possible to use Visual Basic (for those who don't know C, OPL, Java etc.) using the AppForge incarnation on Palm or PPC with Bluetooth cards. AppForge has some technical notes on how to do this.]

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 12:28:17 GMT

:: Peephole interface ::

No, it's not a voyeur's gadget, but a technique for viewing large-area virtual spaces using a physically smaller display by moving the display over the virtual space. Think of moving a small picture frame over a large map or picture and that what you see in the frame is what the display would show. The concept is one that I had been developing some of my own ideas towards, although I discovered more prior art than I was expecting, mostly due to work already going on in the augmented and virtual reality arenas.

My interest, not surprisingly, is in mobile applications. It initially struck me as a useful solution for viewing original-format web pages on handheld devices without having to go through any content adaptation processes. I think that this is still a potential solution to the problem.

The challenge is really in how to achieve spatial awareness for the device so that the display software knows whereabouts the peephole is located relative to the underlying image. An optical technique makes sense and I have focussed my research on this approach.

Interesting prior art can be found at Kay-Ping Yee’s site out at Berkley.

Wed, 10 Mar 2004 23:41:25 GMT

:: More Phoney Ideas ::

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3498714.stm

Coming soon after a week when David Hockney expressed despairing frustration about the erosion of photographic truth in a post-Photoshop age, this "invention" is a further foray into our digitally uncertain futures. This mobile phone product enables callers to insert false background noises to reproduce the desired milieu, perhaps a doctor's surgery waiting room, or a traffic jam. Supposedly, though I have not heard them, the false noises are authentic sounding: like the “real” thing.

Ironically, digital electronics was invented in order to gain precision, accuracy and authenticity. However, as Neil Postman commented in Technopoly, technologies have their own idea about the future. The power to correct digital mistakes lends itself to the ability to manipulate. Whereas we originally wanted to ensure that a “1” was indeed a “1” and a “0” was indeed a “0”, the corrective nature of being digital also allows for the “1” to become the “0” and vice versa, should we simply chose it to be so. Hence, the zeros of guilty silence in the philanderer’s motel bedroom become a frenzy of ones somewhere on the M4.

Little did the bedroom trickster know that his or her phone was reporting its real location to the technically alert spouse! Divorce was pronounced via text message, or an appropriately crafted photo message of two fingers, or something like that: most likely real ones, much to Hockney's delight.

Thu, 31 Jul 2003 12:47:02 GMT

:: Intriguing keypad design from Ventris ::

Things are getting hot in the race for new keypad designs. I am thinking of introducing a category on my blog just to handle it. It seems that there is a lot of activity going on in this area. Quite rightly, as widely adopted keypad designs could make someone very rich! There is no need to stick to conventions, especially bearing in mind that the QWERTY keypad is actually an exercise in deliberately poor design, aimed at slowing the typist down, not speeding them up.

Personally, I just can't seem to stop thinking about text-entry ideas. I avoided writing "keypad ideas", as that may be too limiting to start with. If we doubt that new layouts can be adopted by mobile users, then we may be wrong.

Take the 3650 from Nokia, with its circular pad layout. Whilst I personally don't like it and bemoaned the fact that it broke all usability conventions (in the Java gaming context at least), I was intrigued by its complete disruption of the standard layout and what impact that might have on texting. I raised this with one of the testing managers at O2 who assured me that his teenage daughter had "mastered" it within two days and could text as fast as ever. That's not scientific, but still revealing (what would Nielsen make of it?).

After Fastap, Unitap and FITALY, I was impressed to receive a note from Ventris, who have come up with a new design called HandyScript. At first glance (right), it looks like a prop out of a Star Trek film, something the Klingons would use - BUT I'M NOT MOCKING. This idea takes a little while to sink in, but I have downloaded the trial version and figured out the concept very quickly just by visual inspection. Of course, what I really need is a mobile version so that I can try it out in a context that interests me.

An interesting feature of HandyScript is that it is language independent, able to support multiple languages with the same layout and symbols. This is very intriguing and I would like to examine this more. However, I confess that I have not had much time to formally assess it yet, but I will post a follow-up later.

Thu, 31 Jul 2003 12:03:10 GMT

:: Unitap utilise FITALY keypad layout ::

Those of you following my blog may have read my thoughts on keypads, especially since discovering the wonderful Fastap solution from DigitWireless. My last blog entry mentions Unitap, an almost identical solution from Dutch company RL Technologies who posted a comment highlighting their claimed advantages over Fastap.

I was intrigued to receive a note from these guys stating that they have implemented the FITALY keypad layout (right) from Textware solutions, an alternative to the QWERTY layout, one that works better for one-finger (thumb) typing by minimising finger travel over an average lexicon. This was an idea I openly suggested would make sense with this type of technology. Of course, I'm now dying to try one out, but well done you guys at Unitap for supporting the FITALY. The mobile industry needs progressive solutions like Unitap and Fastap! Whether conservative operators will bite is another matter.

Wed, 09 Jul 2003 20:54:47 GMT

:: Proposal for easier access to Mobile Web (WAP) sites ::

I had some thoughts regarding possible conventions for accessing mobile web sites.

Accessing a mobile web site is cumbersome if a user is expected to enter a URL, like http://www.myusefulapp.com. The entry of URL addresses is not easy on a lot of devices, especially those with numeric keypads. Seeing an advert on a train station billboard that has a convoluted web address is a difficult proposition for mobile users to follow up on; perhaps only the dedicated will try.

Attempts have been made to look at the use of numbers to act as site labels, but thus far all the attempts I have seen (like Bango) are proprietary systems vying for commercial attention. Furthermore, they are not universally known or accepted.

I propose here a simple convention for the mobile device manufacturers and Internet name registries to follow, that would make navigation to WAP sites easier and intuitive. The idea may not be novel, but i have not found it proposed anywhere in my research for my current book "Next Generation Mobile Services".

I summarised the idea in a slide for a new course I am working on ("Mobile Devices"). In essence, we adopt the convention of using domain aliases for our mobile websites, using a new high level domain ".mob". We use numbers for the sites only. So a site http://www.myusefulapp.com would have an alias, for example, of http://www.12213.mob.

The only other convention is that mobile device manufacturers enable these numeric .mob domains to be "dialled" into the phone, causing the browser to open at the appropriate address. I suggest the use of the "@" sign as a prefix. So, I simply dial "@12213" followed by the SEND key, like dialing a phone number, but the browser opens and jumps to http://www.12213.mob which can stay as it is, or be an alias as suggested.

On billboards and in adverts, we simply add the line "dial @12213 for more information on your mobile phone", or however we want to say it. Simple and effective. Over time, the prefix will become widely understood.

[We could consider extensions to the idea that make sub-sites accessible from a single domain. For example, "@12213.1" and "@12213.2" would translate to http://www.12213.mob/1 and http://www.12213.mob/2 and so on. More likely, as we would want to use this for targeted advertising, we would use a parameter, like http://www.12213.mob?param=1 and http://www.12213.mob?param=2. This would be useful for location-specific adverts that do not need to rely on location-finding processes in the mobile network. So an advert for train times could have different post-fixes that map to different timetables on the website.]

Mon, 30 Jun 2003 18:37:05 GMT

:: 50 Words per minute on your Palm ::

I am obsessed with keyboard and data entry problems. I still remember buying my first PDA and gleefully taking it to a meeting with a client. I had the idea that from now on I would record everything electronically. Several problems soon became apparent. I won't bore you with all of them, suffice to say that the need for a constant-sync device was near the top of my list, but wireless PDAs have arrived, so it's nearly an irrelevant problem (but for many glaring holes in the whole wireless PDA approach, but that's for another time).

The biggest problem, and one that led me to end up buying and trying a range of form factors, was the ability to type accurately and fast enough. Since then, I have agonised over this issue, even attempting to invent my own solutions (on paper at least). I recently blogged about the Fastap keyboard, which I finally got to play with. I got excited by the prospect of being able to engage in IM sessions via a small device. Personally, I use IM a lot. I find it a serious and valuable business tool, although too much use begins to nag me, mainly because it can easily end up being an inefficient use of time due to the pauses and slow typing.

Getting to the point, I recently found out about the FITALY keyboard and Instant Text technology from Textware Solutions. Its design is a departure from the QWERTY layout and it has been optimised for one-finger, or stylus, operation. The principle is based on analysing the frequency of letter-to-letter transitions in a representative corpus of the English language. Based on the distance of transitions, the FITALY keyboard has been proposed. There are plenty of examples of how the keyboard enables a higher word rate than the QWERTY layout when being tapped by one-finger or a stylus, hence the claim to 50 words a minute on a Palm, the average otherwise being about 12. That's a good improvement for my money.

Textware solutions have other products, like Instant Text that use abbreviated access to word and sentence completion, but without the need to memorise the abbreviations. I found this particularly attractive because I had previously invented a similar technology to search for people in a a large contacts database using abbreviated access to any information in the database, like first name, surname, company name, email domain, bits of a phone number and so on. This was more as an aide memoire for recalling names remotely via a text-message (SMS) query and maximising the chance of finding the right match, even with the sketchiest of input. We called this technology SmartName and attempted to patent it, though we didn't in the end.

This point about patents brings me closer to the conclusion. I started this weblog mainly to document ideas as and when I had them, at least so they were in the public domain where they might be useful to someone, recognising that my resources for patenting things is limited. That's why the theme of my weblog is more about connecting ideas and making links, not about news snippets, which seems to be a common blog format, which gets tedious if you get caught up in the blog stories loops - blogs that blog from other blogs from other blogs....loops that raise the noise floor a bit too much for my liking.

So my connected thought for this story was recalling how the Fastap keyboard felt a little odd at first due to its unfamiliar layout. I'm used to a QWERTY keyboard and somewhat used to the 2abc 3def keyboards on phones, but the Fastap layout was an ABCD... affair. I shoud hasten, in defence of my friends at Digit Wireless, that this in itself is not a problem. As was pointed out to me, I thought that the letter "a" was on the "1" key when asked, but it turns out to be on the "2" key, thus proving that I am used to the layout by tactile familiarity, even though I don't actually remember the mapping. I think this was the point being made.

The FITALY keyboard is another departure from QWERTY or ABCD, but that presumably is not a problem with regular usage. What immediately came to my mind is how well might the Fastap keyboard work with the FITALY layout? The point is that the Fastap keyboard does not have to be constrained to a 10-digit grid, and that the FITALY is a layout optimised for one-finger (or I guess two thumbs). Hence I propose a FITALY layout for Fastap. I would love to try it anyway.

Thu, 19 Jun 2003 02:23:02 GMT

:: Annotating MMS ::

Following on from my previous posting on annotating MMS messages left hanging in space ("Splash Messaging") - the relevant 3GPP spec for MMS support confirms that SVG is a valid media object to link to in a SMIL file.

The 3GPP MMS uses a subset of SMIL 2.0 as format of the scene description. MMS clients and servers with support for scene descriptions shall support the 3GPP PSS5 SMIL Language Profile. Clause 5.4 mentions valid MIME types for media objects within SMIL and SVG is mentioned. Clause 7.7 elaborates that "The SVG Tiny profile shall be supported".

So on the surface, it seems that scribbling all over a picture could be supported by MMS, if the producer software allowed it.

As an aside, it is noted that Timed Text efforts of the W3C mention a mechanism for annotating video, or at least for providing the synchronisation mechanism for doing so. This makes for interesting possibilities too, and SVG is one way of annotating a video sequence at various chosen frames (or across frames).

All we need now is the semantics for describing who's in the picture along with where the picture was taken. This is not part of the MMS spec, but embedded XML could be one approach, once the suitable semantic form has been selected - could be POIX and something like vCards (in XML/RDF) combined with FOAF.

Mon, 16 Jun 2003 12:51:55 GMT

:: Making a Splash - Posting annotated messages in space ::

Still writing my new book ("Next Generation Wireless Services") and started discussing Semantic Web. The main interest here was in annotating pictures taken from my picture phone. The annotations can be made using a stylus and stored in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). This seems a useful idea as it makes sending pictures more fun and it adds a creative component to leaving pictures (or videos) hanging in space (which I now call "Splash Messaging" in the book). Don't know if SVG support is available yet in 3GPP coding standards for picture messaging (MMS), but it should be.

The Semantic Web connection was initially to add information about who is in the picture, so that connections could be made with other people (even in other photos - see co-depiction project). The other semantic would be in the positional coding i.e. data to say where the picture was taken (coded in Point Of Interest eXchange Language - POIX).

Anyway, in case you want to visualise what I'm talking about, here's a demo (thanks to a great tool called Draw SWF). The output here is in Flash, but you can try viewing the actual SVG file (which may flag some warnings due to non-standard tags, but should display in an SVG capable browser like IE6 or Amaya). You can try viewing the SVG file (but I have used fancy hand-writing fonts, courtesy of Chris Pirillo, and these are only viewable in the Flash version unless you have installed them).

Sat, 14 Jun 2003 01:48:35 GMT

:: Located My Blog ::

Just in case I get lost, I added my blog to the GeoURL project. I am working on ideas for location-based mobile services and this site sparked the imagination. I'l' be posting an observation soon, combining air-graffiti with P2P with all kinds of interesting stuff, wireless of course!

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 12:02:42 GMT

:: Radical idea ? ::

I received the following post from a reader, Naveed Hashmi:

The article (see link below) about developing minimalist user interfaces with Java ("radical new approach almost eliminates the concept of an application with a user interface") may be of interest to you > re: when considering the delivery of mobile apps via limited screen sizes/resolutions? Just a quick idea.

http://www.fawcette.com/javapro/2002_04/magazine/columns/javatecture/

Having briefly surveyed the "Naked Objects" materials presented by the originators of this minimalist approach to User Interfaces, I confess to getting excited about Objects again! There are possibilities here for wireless, but my initial thoughts were on using this to enable toolkits for building mobile services relatively quickly and easily. It has potential though in all kinds of ways.

Thanks Naveed.

Sat, 07 Jun 2003 22:37:28 GMT

:: Social Film-making ::

In my recent observation, I pondered on the idea that leaving video messages suspended in space would catch on and become a potentially popular 3G app.

Thus far, video recorders are still aimed at filming things in a "point and record" manner - what you see is what you get. Will this change? This was a thought running through my mind. Point-and-shoot sequences can easily end up being boring. We need a way to make video shoots more fun and more creative, perhaps a way to make short films or video "poems", rather than unedited clips.

If there were a button on the 3G phone that said "Let's make a film" - what might that feature be? If there were a button that said, "Let's make a film with..." (i.e. with other camera-phone owners), what might that feature be?

Food for thought.....

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 01:17:32 GMT

:: Mobile Printing ::

Whilst writing my new book on next-generation mobile services I was going over ways of looking for value in a plain old wireless email service. Well, I say plain old, as there aren't that many old wireless email services around, but certainly plenty of plain ones.

The problem is that ordinary desktop applications are plonked into the mobile world without an iota of thought about the mobile context and its unique challenges. For example, in my recent trial run with O2's xmail, it is not possible to filter the view of the inbox just to list important people, such as clients. This would come under the "Me" attribute in Ahonen's 5 M's of finding value in mobile services, a pattern I find useful and hence I refer to it often in my book.

Under the 5-M attribute of Money, I was wondering how a wireless email service might require micropayment for value added services. Then I recalled an old idea we had in Magic E back when we had launched a product to interface with Exchange using 2-way text-messaging (pre-WAP era). One of the features was the ability to remotely forward files stored in a public folder. Using a fax server, the remote forwarding could be to a fax machine, thus offering a basic remote printing service for crucial documents. Perhaps caught out in a crucial sales meeting, one text message later and a key sales document could be arriving at the nearby fax machine in the hotel office-services bureau.

In my book, I have updated this example to include all manner of variants, one being the ability to find a locally networked printer on a WiFi hotspot. It’s a simple matter to upload a document, or email forward it, to a printer with a server to carry out the print job by proxy.

Upon enquiring from a friend in the US who is very much involved in the hotspot business, he pointed out to me a service that turns out to look quite interesting. It’s called PrintMe (from EFI). It enables any wireless device to print documents to a local printer. All that is required is an account with PrintMe and the ability to forward the attachment, or upload it. Collection of the document is protected by a unique document receipt ID that the sender has to key in to the PrintMe station. The even better news is that if there is no PrintMe station nearby, then – yes, you’ve probably guessed it – you can forward to a fax.

The service is subscription based, but I confess to not checking the details. The real future for stuff like this is micropayment so that users can benefit from the service without having to sign up. In fact, not having to sign-up for things is, in my opinion, one of the key design requirements for next-generation services, but I’ll save that point for a future observation on my blog.

Sun, 11 May 2003 17:12:01 GMT

:: Service creation platforms ::

The problem looming is that with all these different potential services - foneblogs, picture galleries, email etc, it would be a shame to have lots of different sites to access. Operator portals are an obvious place to coalesce these services and operators need to think about integration of 3rd party services at the portal level. In my mind, there is a product opportunity for someone to supply operators with a decent service-creation portal that can enable any combination of useful applications to be brought together on a targetted user-group level. Just like community sites like Ecademy site are built using Drupal (or something like Plone - cool if you like Python), wireless portals should be possible using a similar concept, but the difference would be a charging concept that would enable the 3rd party to share revenue.

This idea is what we (Magic E) had originally intended with Zingo when we created the world's first wireless portal as a demonstrator for Lucent's 3G capabilities (a long time back!). We should have stuck to our guns as I think the time is right for this! Any takers??

Fri, 04 Apr 2003 01:29:32 GMT

:: "Death of 3G ?" ::

I've been holding off making any comments about Clay Shirky's "death of 3G" siren, as a Techdirt posting (below) comments on. Maybe I'm too scared that it's true. It could be, but I wanted (and need) more time to compose a lengthy reply, which I may never get time to do. For now I wanted to dump some thoughts whilst fresh in my mind after pizza with a few guys in the wireless industry whose views I value.

Whilst Clay's analogy seems attractive, I am not so convinced. One could argue the merits of the "permanet" versus "nearlynet" model and the examples chosen, but I think the real problem here is that we need to work the numbers on this, just like we need to work the engineering through on the whole open spectrum debate that is perhaps struggling to climb out of its lofty political origins.

Why do I mention these two issues side by side? Well, there is the matter of quality of service that seems to get overlooked when comparing a controlled and planned network versus an ad-hoc one. Professor Lawrence Lessig’s road versus railroad analogy may not be the most apt if you happen to live where traffic jams are the rule of the day! This needs a lengthy discussion in order to appreciate its significance, and that discussion needs to take place between experts better than myself, though my hope is that the realm of analogies gets replaced by serious proposals.

Hand-waving myself for a moment the issue with WiFi hotspots is that they are just not going to do the job. Before long, users of hotspots will want hot-zones and before long hot-regions. Wait, isn't that 3G?

If the sociological shifts predicted (observed!) by Howard Rheingold are what the near-future holds, then users will become part of an information world that is pyschologically very time-sensitive, be it the need to know news about terror threats or, more likely, the need to satisfy a whole plethora of social appetites that we have yet to understand.

This time-sensitive info-social networking means constant (wide-area) data coverage is essential. In terms of economics I have my own views on why the value perception for such access will be markedly different to what we are seeing right now for mobile voice (hence why such comparisons are of limited value). The clue is in the idea that social status, well-being and wealth generation will be stronyl related to conducting our "business" online and that mobile access with continuity will become a valued essential and very much demanded. Quite possibly, the distinction between "business use" and "consumer use" will blur, further upping the ante for constant connectivity.

In short, there will be a viable economic case for 3G. What it can offer is so incredibly valuable and won't be on sale anywhere else - certainly not via a patchwork of WiFi hotspots. These definitely have value in the short-term and will always have a place in our wireless existence, but they will never replace the need for a wide-area mobile network.

Sometimes we seem to forget where we are coming from. The problem right now is that for wide area mobile access, all we have is GPRS, which is a voice network with data grafted on its back. Hence why peformance is poor and not likely to improve. So we need something better and that is 3G.

Now the current economic factors that are weighing 3G down are not going to stop 3G from going ahead. It seems inconceivable that for the next 10 years we are going to sit back and do nothing whilst a revolution in our work and social habits takes place that demands time-sensitive ("always on") access. Hotspots are not going to make it - they will be too sparse, too poorly maintained and never be able to offer the quality of service required.

I caution myself that these issues are not to be lightly tossed in the air - as I have done. It is not a matter of clever argument and guesswork, resorting to analogies and irrelevant history to make a case. We need to contrive various models of usage for future mobile-community scenarios and take a deep look at the engineering issues. Perhaps if we did this, as I know some people are doing, then we can focus our efforts where it makes sense to do so, for all our sakes. Afterall, for all our sakes, it actually makes sense that we get 3G - and WiFi - to work effectively well .

But for now, I am a "Field of Dreams" believer for 3G - "if we build it, they will come". Actually most operators can afford to bankroll this for a long time yet. Probably the best thing we can do, 3G pundit or not, is to talk up the confidence in the wireless future and attract more investment into 3G, not more pessimism. All those investors who have shyed away from technology stocks should be piling their money into wireless - it definitely has a future!

p.s. My associate at IPWireless tells me that 3G has a future "only if it's TDD" (but he might be biased :-).

-----------------------

Permanet, Nearlynet, And Wireless Data. As per usual, an insightful article from Clay Shirky looking at "permanets" vs. "nearlynets". His argument is that "permanets", networks built by a few large entities tend to fail when competing against "nearlynets", networks that are cobbled together randomly by individuals. His argument is that "permanets" are usually high quality - but expensive, and nearlynets are usually lousy but cheap. However, over time, nearlynets improve much faster than permanets get cheap. This makes sense. Any nearlynet has incentive to get better. Permanets, though, have to recover their high initial capital costs, and thus, have less incentive to get cheap quickly. As an example of failed permanets, he talks about airplane phones and Iridium, both of which make his case perfectly. In both cases, lower quality, but cheaper mobile phones took away the ability for the permanet solution to make money. Now, he says, that 3G is the next permanet, and WiFi is its competing nearlynet. Of course, when you think about it, it's a little odd that mobile phones were the "nearlynets" in his initial examples, but suddenly become the "permanet" in his prediction. There are, though, differences between regular 2G mobile phones and the 3G data plans that carriers are betting on. We've said in the past that the 3G providers are likely to price their offerings terribly (toll booth style, rather than flat rate) and Shirky points out that this is likely to push people towards the "nearlynet" of WiFi. Definitely worth reading.

Source: [Techdirt Corporate Intelligence: Techdirt Wireless]

Fri, 21 Mar 2003 13:03:06 GMT

:: Laser writing (Airtext revisited?) ::

Following on from the previous post, I think it would be possible to enable a presentation to be annotated in real-time via a laser pointing device. Ignoring the physics (yikes! that's probably the hard bit) the principle is to use a camera attached to the laptop and which points at the screen. The laser pointer has two illuminations - one is the visible dot, as per usual, and the other is a pattern projected at a different wavelength but visible to the camera. Using pattern extraction, the camera can detect where the pointer is in relation to the screen (various methods could be deployed to calibrate a fixed position) and then send these co-ordinates to the overlay software to appear as digital ink. Needs more research....(probably already done but didn't have time to check).

Fri, 21 Mar 2003 12:20:03 GMT

:: Bluetooth Laser Pointer and Mouse ::

This looks like a great product to buy. I actually bought my wireless mouse so that I could use it for advancing slides during my training courses for 3G. The new device from Logitech not only does that, but it enables greater range via Bluetooth and has a laser pointer built in. My next thought was to see if this could be done via a Bluetooth phone? I couldn't find any solutions on the market but I'm sure it is coming, especially with the Bluetooth API for J2ME. One can imagine a MIDlet on the phone that enables remote control of the PC including on-screen pop-up menus navigated via the phone joypad. May sound silly, but why carry another device when you have a phone already in the pocket? (OK, it won't have a laser pointer granted.)