On my terms

If there is something that is booming right now, it is mobile software. In spite of the vast variety of incompatible platforms, the number of mobile applications is growing very rapidly. Business houses know that mobile presence is imminent for them, and developers just can’t stop themselves from making new applications for their mobiles. Given such a huge development activity, one would expect current day mobile handsets to be full of software to do almost everything. However such is not the case. The discovery and distribution of applications is still an open problem. People want to try out software on their phones, but they don’t know what software to try, where to get it from, etc.

App Stores from Apple, RIM, Palm are initiatives in this direction, and they have definitely solved a part of the problem. For these phones, there is atleast  one place where software can be found. However all these initiatives are very specific in nature, and are usually not very unbiased. There is usually an entry cost for applications, and a number of other things one could of have done without.

There has to be something simpler, something more genuine. So there is Munimo. Munimo is a community initiative, started by myself & Mobisy Technologies (P) Ltd in association with MOMO Bangalore, where mobile enthusiasts come and share their favorite applications. With a very small number of contributors at the moment, Munimo has already started turning useful for new users. Go there, and you can see the favorite applications of most avid mobile users. You know of an application and you want to share with others, just log in to Munimo and add it to the collection. Your contributions will surely go a long way in making mobiles more useful for everyone.

In its current state, Munimo is simply a web portal where people come and tell about the applications they love. The next step for us is to push out Munimo mobile application for as many platforms as possible. Though it may sound like an ardous task, but thanks to Mobitop it essentially is just a few clicks job. Oops, not aware of Mobitop? For the uninitiated, Mobitop is magic wand for mobile application developers developed by Mobisy. Mobitop is an application platform which allows developers to convert their wap sites into mobile applications via a packaging tool. As of now, Mobitop is not directly available on Mobisy website, however that’s going to change soon. But feel free to get in touch with them, Mobisy team is more than eager to share their creation with everyone.

Once the applications are out, what would you like to see more? If you got any ideas, please let us know. Ideas/Suggestions are more than welcome. Code to implement them - even more :).

What do you think about a Mobile Application Profile (MAP). So you use a phone, and have a number of applications on it. The applications and their genre is what I call a MAP. When you move on to another phone, chances are that you are going to use a similar set of applications. What if all that happens by itself using your MAP. I think it’s very cool. What do you think?

Let’s make it happen.

It’s been a really long time off from my blog and my due apologies to everyone (if anyone at all) who likes reading my ramblings. A lot of things were happening around me which left me no time to write. And when there was time at hand, the thoughts were too jumbled up to be put across clearly.

I finally got married.
Raina and I tied the knot on the 8th of May last month. The wedding took place at Hyatt Regency, New Delhi in presence of the entire family and all the friends. It was a lovely experience.After the wedding, the two of us shot off for our honeymoon to Bali. I was pleasantly surprised on reaching Bali. It was far more beautiful and happening than my expectations. Highlights of Bali are the lovely white sand beaches, all sorts of adventure sports and the sea beach restraunts. Those who love water sports must not miss rafting in the Telaga Waja River. After Bali, I spent some time in Australia where Raina is currently pursuing her MBA before coming back to Delhi. For the first time, it was a pain to come back to work.

Apart from this, I was also occupied developing another mobile software that I conceptualized with a friend. However, the project had to be taken down midway, as it required assistance from the operators, and other third party vendors. Sometimes I feel I am rusting. I have produced absolutely nothing after Bluxone. It’s not about the lack of ideas I think, rather very frankly it’s the focus element that has gone wrong. High time I pull it back.

Recently, I got an iPhone for myself. I am seriously impressed with the usability of the product. One must admit that Apple has something about doing seamless design. There products run on their own. You don’t need to figure much out, and when you have to, it’s a pleasure in itself. To tell you about usability, my mom who always had a hard time figuring out how to read and write SMS on my previous Symbian phones, is now completely hooked onto playing games on iPhone (gyroscopic, in particular).There are a lot of things iPhone doesn’t do. It would not let you connect with other mobile over Bluetooth. It wouldn’t play a number of video formats, one needs to convert them for iPhone. It would not run flash content - this one is a serious disappointment. However, in spite of all that it doesn’t do, it does enough to keep you engaged. It has created a wow factor among people about using smartphones. People who never moved on beyond their Nokia 2100’s and never felt the need to do anything more than text and calls on a cell phone, are getting all worked up for getting a iPhone for themselves. Professionals who till now only used a smartphone if their company provided one, are now willing to shell out money to get one of their own. This emerging trend is doing a lot of good to not only Apple, but other phone companies as well. As more people start turning up on stores, everyone in the market gains.

On a different note, how long do you think Symbian can stay in the market if they do not do something drastic about their usability? Their developer support is already an exaggerated example of what drives away even the most perseverant developers. Let’s just wait and watch. It’s going to be an interesting battle out there.

BluXone opens up today for Limited Beta Release.
Its a cool Bluetooth networking software for Series 60 2nd Edition Mobile Phones.

Quoting the website,

BluXone (Blu-Zone) is a bluetooth application for your Series 60 based Mobile Phones. With BluXone, you may now use your mobile phone to:

• Share favourite songs, videos, pictures and ring tones with others
• Creat personal profiles for others to view- share your likes, dislikes, thoughts, actions, emotions
• View profiles of others around you and chat with them
• Make announcements - all users in your range will get to know what you have to say
• Free to download and free to use!!

Try it out on your phones, and let the team know how do you like it. Your inputs would help the BluXone team shape the product better, and reach the public beta soon.

While demonstrating BluXone to some friends, I realised that people are still not comfortable with installing applications on their mobile phones. On further querying I found out that they are actually not aware of how to do it. So I thought I would just write a small article on how to install applications on the Mobile phones.

Symbian (Nokia) Phones

1. Install Nokia PC Suite in case you dont have it. Its a free software from Nokia to establish seemless connectivity between your work machine and the mobile phone.
2. Connect your phone to the desktop. You can do it in a number of ways.
1. Can use the data cable which comes with the phone.
2. If your desktop has Bluetooth/InfraRed capabilities that you can also use them to connect to your phone. Adding Bluetooth/InfraRed capabilities to your desktop/laptop is as simple as putting in a USB adapter for the same in your machine.

Whichever mode you choose, PC Suite would figure out the connection.

3. Downlaod the application installer on your desktop/laptop. Installation files are usually *.sis, *.sisx (Symbian Installation Packages), or *.jar (J2ME Installation Packages).
4. All you need to do now is to double click on the application installer.
5. Rest of the installation instructions would come on your phone.
6. If your phone has internet connectivity, you can also point your phone directly to the application download link. Download the application on your phone, and the installation would begin as the download completes.

Windows Mobile Phones

1. Install Microsoft ActiveSync, and rest of the procedure should be all same.
2. Installation files are usually *.cab, or *.jar (J2ME Installation Packages).
3. If you have the .exe for the application, you can simply copy it to the phone as well (using ActiveSync), and can start using it. The beauty of a Windows Mobile phone is that using it is no different from using Windows on your desktop.

Will come back and write about doing this on other platforms as well. Will also fill up the gaps in the information here. Drop a comment if you would like to know about something specifically.

This was a big one. I had started to think that the alpha level testing of BluXone is about to get complete, just when I met this bug. Harshdeep, one of my friends, who is very fondly testing this app in and out was extremely annoyed by this. We were just trying out the routine functionality sitting in the office, and but nothing seemed to work. No media listings, no device discovery, and a lot of fake devices were getting discovered. We went out in the open, and everything worked fine. On some more investigation I figured out that the iMacs sitting around us were disturbing my little baby. The problem was lying in the piece of code which used to check for valid peers. However that looks fixed now, and I am a relieved man. Had this been left uncovered till the release, it would have been an embarassing bug.

No, not me. I have completely lost hope of getting back in shape. Its about BluXone. Yes, its getting in shape. Everything is functional now, and I am just spending a lot of time in testing it out.If you are wondering what it is, BluXone is a P2P Media Exchange software for Series 60 based Mobile Phones, with a good amount of social networking support. I will not give away all about it at the moment. Lets just wait for some more time, and you will have it full on your mobile phones.

By the way, my first few users seem to have liked it. That came as a good encouragement. Raina is a big big critic of mine. When I showed it to her, she had this golden smile on her face. She was kind of surprised by what her dumb boy friend has done. It was a great feeling when she said its great, and better than what she expected. She also gave a lot of inputs on what more I can do to make it better. One thing about her always amazes me. She has no technical background or anything, but still great ideas just keep flowing out of her head. She would keep speaking and commenting on my work, and I will be collecting all the great inputs. Hehe. I would say she wouldn’t have even a little bit of idea how much she has contributed to my work.

Even Harshdeep had nice things to say about it. He kept playing with it like a little kid, and told me its very professionally done. Now that felt good. It was always one of my big targets, that even if I am doing it alone, i have to make it top class.

Umm, so I guess thats enough of self-praise. I hope other users like it as much when I complete it and put it on web for everyone to use.

If you have a venturing mind (and some good idea about what to do), here are some good pointers about things you can use to prepare yourself up.

David Cowan’s Blog

On David’s Blog, you will find a whole lot of articles about Venture Capitals, Industry in General, and a lot more. Here are some of my favorites among those.
How not to write a business plan
This infact suggests how to write a good business plan. Do not miss out reading Boris’s tips on the PitchCraft.

Will keep adding to this as I find more stuff.
Good luck.