B. Mann Consulting

I'm catching up on some mobile-related blog reading today, and was spurred to write something by Tim Bray's Mobile Blues and Dean Bubley's re-post of an article by David Wood. (And thanks to Roland's Google Reader Shared Items, where I am getting a wealth of mobile and food related links)

Canada (and the world in general) is caught up in a storm of mobile imaginings based on the launch of the 3G iPhone. Recent results of app sales potentially point to a future where carriers *don't* have a chokehold on the mobile handset experience: for the first time, your average non-technical end users can easily buy and install applications for your mobile fun. Except, of course, it's just another kind of walled garden, just one run by a computer company instead of a carrier.

Tim in particular has issues with that, as well as with having to learn yet another development environment to program native apps for the iPhone:

But there’s a little problem and a big problem. The little problem is that I don’t wanna learn Objective-C and I don’t wanna learn a whole new UI framework. I acknowledge that lots of smart people think Objective-C and Cocoa are both wonderful, and quite likely they’re right. I don’t care. I’m lazy; I know enough languages and enough frameworks. You’re free to disapprove, but there are a whole lot of people like me out there.

The big problem is this: I don’t wanna be a sharecropper on Massa Steve’s plantation. I don’t want to write code for a platform where there’s someone else who gets to decide whether I get to play and what I’m allowed to sell, and who can flip my you’re-out-of-business-switch any time it furthers their business goals. …

OK, points taken. You don't *have* to learn another programming environment, but every experience I've had with Java on every single phone I've ever owned has been .... terrible. Use Java if you want to quickly prototype an app for your enterprise ... but the usability and UI for the average end user, never mind the install process, is terrible. Most people go to native platform code for that final bit of polish (IF that polish is needed for your target market).

I don't have much to say on the locked platform aspects: you make your choices. In some ways, writing native apps for *any* platform is a level of lock in. That is, shouldn't we rail against OS X native only apps in the same way?

And here we finally come to the punchline hinted at by the title. For desktop operating systems, there are now a couple of site specific browsers (SSBs [wikipedia link]): you enter in the URL of a website / webapp and it is bundled into a separately clickable "application" that you can run like any other native program on your desktop. I use Fluid, based on a WebKit engine, and there is also Prism, based on a Mozilla engine.

So, somewhere between widgets and full blown native applications, can an SSB engine for mobile operating systems reign supreme? Bubley's summarized thoughts on this are:

…for many applications, Mobile Web will be the way to go, for ease of development, cross-platform support, rapid update and so on.

But for some the most important and demanding applications, there will still be a need for native development, even if it comes with a dose of pain.

The mobile web, with advanced, compliant browsers available on smartphones like the iPhone or various Nokia phones, is the Internet. Various UI niceties and formatting to fit the screen factor aside, this is regular ol' HTML and AJAX, no new platform to learn here.

So, I'm looking forward to "Fluid for iPhone" or "Prism for Series 60": I can think of a web app developer or three that would be VERY interested in exploring a potentially very quick way to have apps on these smartphone platforms, without the full pain of native app writing. Actually, paging Handimobility -- there might be a very nice business in there...

I'm going to be on CTV Newsnet again, this afternoon at 3:15PM PST, live with Marcia MacMillan. Below are a few notes and links, I'll clean this up and post a link to the clip once it's wrapped. I talked about the iPhone last time, and somehow I think it's going to come up again.

in fact, Rogers is the only firm NOT charging for incoming texts, they now have a decent data plan, they have the high end Nokia phones, AND they have the iPhone.

Only North America charges for incoming text messages -- Europe and Asia have always been free.

via Ian Bell - http://www.physorg.com/news129793047.html - "SMS costs are, in the aggregate, 4x higher than getting data from the Hubble space telescope. Global SMS revenues are larger than the Hollywood movie, music and video game industries combined."

Lots more from Ian, like "I could personally store-and-forward all of Canada’s SMS traffic myself via my Novus broadband in Yaletown, and it would have limited impact on my BitTorrenting". Oh, right, and of course the fact that SMS effectively is NO extra load on carriers - "As such it costs the network exactly nothing and uses no bandwidth that isn’t already in use — traffic load is the same on the network even if no SMS messages are being transferred." - http://www.kenneyjacob.com/2007/06/19/how-sms-works/

via Yule Heibel - Productivity is boosted by mobile - "They say that by 2016 the value of the combined mobile wireless voice and broadband productivity gains to the US economy will equal $427 billion per year" - http://www.psfk.com/2008/07/how-mobile-boosts-productivity.html

Bell and Telus being called before Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry - http://www.smstextnews.com/2008/07/bell_telus_called_before_federal_indu... - of course, I'm going to mention C-61 and cellphone locking that Mr. Prentice has a hand in

Update: I was off at a photowalk this evening and am just getting back. My segment was quite short, but I'm glad I got a C-61 mention in. Thanks to Mr. iPhone John Biehler for digging up the direct link to my clip: http://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/text-charges/#clip65669

I'm glad I waited in posting any sort of "the iPhone with Rogers will suck" commentary, as it seems they have somewhat come to their senses. As usual, John Biehler was my iPhone news source, and here's the link to the Roger's press release.

A new "promotional" data plan is going to be available until August 31st (and I actually believe they'll extend it...), where you can bring your own voice plan, and add a 6GB data plan for only $30 / month. Hmm, maybe over 50K signatures at ruinediphone.com changed their mind? No, it's not unlimited ... but in talking to Roland -- who is the heaviest mobile app user I know -- he's never gone over 500MB. I think I used a couple of GBs when I was at the Olympics in Torino, and large megapixel camera phones and the fast 3G speeds could certainly eat bandwidth, but 6GB seems fair.

So...am I getting an iPhone? Nope. I don't really like contracts, and I don't like locked phones. I imagine we'll be able to get an unlocked iPhone at some point, where I'll be able to swap out SIM cards when traveling as I do now.

Meanwhile, looks like I'll be on CTV Newsnet talking about the other Canadian wireless barons -- Bell and Telus. They are going to start charging for incoming text messages. Well, this should be a fun ride ... Rogers isn't charging for incoming, it has the iPhone and the latest Nokia phones, and now -- decent data plans. Really, what are Bell and Telus thinking?

Update: Looks like this is not just for iPhone -- you can add this plan to *any* phone, as long as you sign a 3 year contract, and it does apply to Fido as well. See the post on howard forums for reference.

After being really happy with the Nokia Multimedia Transfer app for OS X to get music onto my phone, and photos off it onto iPhoto, I started looking to solve the "where to get new music" problem.

Around the same time, I was playing with the Nokia Podcasting app. Put simply, it is a podcast browser / downloader, which you can set to automatically connect to a network connection and download new podcast updates at a specified time. I set my phone to charge overnight, and set it up so that it would auto connect to my home wi-fi network.

Then I found Hypemachine. Yeah, yeah, I'm not really a cool trendy new music guy, and I *had* heard about it before, I just never really used it: it's a giant blog aggregator that tracks mentions of music and links to MP3s. It also exposes all this music blog aggregation as a podcast, with enclosures to the MP3 links. Not a traditional podcast at all -- it's whatever the Hypemachine has auto aggregated during that time period.

So, every morning, my phone is loaded with brand new music. It's eclectic to say the least -- last Friday featured lots of 4th of July-themed songs. The first time I set it up, I got some nice Catholic-rock-band tunes. Last night, I copied that music back to my computer after about 2 weeks of doing this. 63 songs survived my listening over that period, and I cut that down to about 40 that I would keep / give at least 3 stars to.

I'm listening to a lot more music on the go with this setup, and am being exposed to lots of "new stuff". So far, I bought the new Cold Play "Viva la Vida" album (definitely not a "long tail" band), as well as Ra Ra Riot both as iTunes Plus downloads. But the majority of the bands seem to be ones that I need to point you to their MySpace page to listen to their songs -- see Hooded Fang for one example.

It's been a fun experience so far, and I always look forward to what the next night of downloading will bring me. This whole listening to music on the go thing might really take off one of these days :P

Where do you find new music? Where do you listen to it? Where do you buy it?

Looks like I'll be on CTV Newsnet at 12:15pm today, talking about Rogers bringing the iPhone to Canada.

Of course, the funny thing here is that there are many many people in Canada who already have the iPhone, in its "unlocked" edition. John Biehler's iPhone category is my source for all the latest in unlocking and cool applications.

The rumour seems to think that part of the delay and secrecy is because of the possibility that we might get the "new" version of the iPhone, with 3G (which is a faster data network connection). The other rumours about the new model (or models? maybe a "business" version to compete with RIM's BlackBerry?) are things like a much upgraded camera, or even a front mounted camera for video calling.

I'm genuinely happy that we're getting the iPhone "for real" in Canada, but I'm worried about a) the price of the contract and b) the length of any contract from Rogers. We're in a monopoly situation here, since there aren't any other GSM providers in Canada. Expect Telus and Bell to start heavily pushing the HTC Touch and various consumer BlackBerry devices like the Pearl.

Update: here's a direct link to my video clip.

After the jump, the email I received from LoadMyTracks -- saying that the Globalsat DG-100 is now supported on Mac OS X with their application. Here are my previous posts about the DG-100.

Yeah, I know, I've been *really* bad about using it. I got busy right when I received it. Now it's time to re-invest some time into using it consistently. I want my Flickr map to have more photos on it (I recently uploaded my 9000th photo).

I fully blame Chris Heuer. I signed up for an Utterz account, after trashing him quite thoroughly over Skype some time back :P

What is Utterz? Well, it's mobile blogging, sort of. The only capability I've taken advantage of so far is the audio. You get a local (yes, even in Canada!) phone number that you can call, hit a few buttons, record whatever you want to say, hit some more and your recording will get posted. It posts (within 10 minutes) to the Utterz site, but can then also be set up to auto post to a number of other different places, like your blog or send out a Twitter notification. And yes, of course there is an RSS feed of your Utterz, so it's easy to pipe into Jaiku as well.

Aside from audio, you can also send pictures, video, and text to a special email address, and it will associate that with any audio Utterz you made in a 10 minute period.

So, you'll notice an Utterz widget in the sidebar top right, and I've also embedded a horizontal widget right in this post. Tonight, sore throat and all, I opened up my delicious bookmarks page and talked about the last 10 bookmarks I made.

Chris Bovard just left a great comment on the iPhone Nano thread -- here's the closer on his post about why he's unlikely to get an iPhone and why he can't understand why everyone is so hyped about it:

My next phone purchase will be N95 8gig because I love my current N95. If I buy another bigger phone it will be a http://www8.garmin.com/nuvifone/ when it is out. I own an older Garmin GPS I use for mountaineering. You can drop it and it goes under water. If Garmin puts this much though into their phone well the iphone will be just another toy.

Maybe time for everyone too look at the big picture instead of yet another Mac babysitter product for the mass.

"Mac babysitter product" is a great post. Except, well, the masses WANT babysitter products. I replied in the same thread -- here's the last bit of my comment:

Food for thought. I am all for competition, so I hope that Nokia continues with Series 60 development and also innovates in their new Linux-based systems (ref: their purchase of Trolltech, which makes cross platform GUI stuff). What these other players MUST realize is that the time has come where the mobile phone is moving BEYOND the bounds of the walled garden telcos, into the open platform of the Internet, and all competitors MUST strive to engage with network and platform effects in order to succeed long term.

The mobile market is one of those areas where so much interesting stuff is happening. I'm glad that we're having these types of discussions.

So...who else thinks there is going to be an iPhone Nano?

The main complaint against the iPhone seems to be the price point. Looking at things like the widely popular Motorola RAZR, which ended up in the mass market price bracket, I just have to believe that Apple is thinking along the same lines.

A similar form factor as the Nano, except screen taking the place of the click wheel. What else removed? Not sure, maybe no wifi? Limited storage?

Anyway, just thought I would record this crazy idea. I have no inside information, only time will tell if I'm right. And without a photoshop mock up, I'm not going to get tons of traffic :P

Update: Alexa commented and made a Photoshop of an iPod Touch Nano / iPhone Nano:

Since I've written about how expensive mobile data plans in Canada are, I should probably praise Rogers for finally getting some sane(r) pricing.

I saw via John Biehler that Engadget had posted rates from Rogers as low as $65 / month for 1GB (recall that in comparison the chart in the previous link which shows 1GB at $4000 / month). Well, as Engadget mentions in the title, my jaw did drop, but it quickly snapped shut again when I looked closer and saw that this applies to PC Cards only ... not to the GSM or 3G phones we've been toting around for years.

Per device pricing for data rates seems....well, it seems underhanded if not down right illegal. I wonder what the rules around pricing of telecommunications services have to say about this? Paging Michael Geist!

Still...this hints that Rogers *could* offer prices like this for, say, the iPhone?

Thanks to the TorCamp Swarm on Skype for discussion around this.