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.

Do you really need that on a mobile application?

It’s high time the application developers start to see mobile & computers as two fundamentally different devices.

Computers in their early days were often a shared property among a group of academicians, students etc. Things have changed over time. You have a computer available for yourself wherever you go - there is an office machine, lab machine, home machine and so on. Through out this time, users have never had a one to one relationship with a computer. Hence, a user authentication system based on a login/pwd on each use makes a lot of sense.

On the other hand, mobile phones right from their introduction have been a personal asset. Mobile phones are full of personal information - all kept open. People don’t share their mobiles with each other. Keeping all this in mind, and looking at the mobile device in isolation, does it look sensible to ask me a login whenever I use an application on my mobile.

I am not proposing any solution here(as there are many), I am just trying to identify the problem.

- If there are things that you hate to see on your mobile phone, do leave a comment about them

– Reading a compilation of statistics on the usage of web on mobile –
Ughh, not again dude!!

Why is mobile web nothing more than a web browser? Why do I care how many people are using Safari or Opera Mini on their phone.

On a PC, I would agree that most of web usage is through a browser. But does that mean that it should happen the same way on a mobile as well? Would a plain emulation of PC on a handset make a good enough use-case for people? Think…

Hasn’t iPhone already proved a point in this arena?

Micro-blogging is more fun :D. Short and frequent (hopefully) from now on.

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.

However sick one might get of hearing about Advertising on Mobile Phones but the kind of buzz that’s there in the industry makes you believe that there must be something in it. And to think of it there has to be. Advertising on TV is the major bread earner (if not only) of all the TV channels. A big chunk of the cost of the newspaper you read every morning comes out of the advertising revenues.

What needs to be observed here is that you don’t watch TV to check out the Ads, in-fact you hate them when they interrupt your favorite show. Similarly you don’t read a newspaper to check out the brands listed in the corner of each page. People in the mobile industry somehow don’t want to see this. They want the user to take initiative to watch their advertisements so that they can make money. Some have even gone ahead on holistic grounds claiming that they don’t want to spam, so they will ask “Sir when would you prefer to see advertisements, and of what nature”.

Very recently I found out about this website called mGinger. I must say they have created quite a stir with a very simple offering that they have. They say you tell us your preference of time to see ads and we will pay you to see the advertisements of the things you are interested in. Very simple, straight-forward and mathematically perfect. I get 3 cents per ad I serve and I give 1 cent to you to watch it, why wouldn’t you.

Is it something missing here, or is it just me. Where is the money coming from? From the advertisers. Why are they advertising? So that they can sell more. So they will keep advertising if they get a good ROI from this proposition, i.e. if the conversions happen. Now the rate of conversions in this system depends a lot on the market segment that they capture. If the only market segment they capture are the users who are particularly excited about saving 300-400 Rs a month by watching advertisements on mobile phone (they are surely not the ones who excite the advertisers), I am not sure how do they plan to give a good ROI to their advertisers.

However, this is just their start. So I would like to believe that they do have plans to unveil some other value propositions for the users. Let’s wait and watch.

Bluxone 0.4.40 is out.
Check out the post at the BluXone Blog for more details.

The last couple of months have been a rollercoaster ride of emotions, ambitions and belief.

I remember when I was trying to learn how to ride a bicycle, I used to fall time and again. Dad would tell me that I am not doing it right, that I am looking at the bicycle and not looking at the road ahead. Every time I fell, I made a note of what went wrong and made sure I don’t repeat the same mistake twice. In a matter of a few weeks I was riding like a pro, and could even perform some very cool stunts.

But this time I am not even sure if this bike can be ridden. Every thing else is same. I have tried, I have fallen, and I have tried again. Today I feel I am standing at point 0, and not for the first time. Some good things have happened since the last time I was here. BluXone is one of them. But I feel I am still as distant from my target as I ever was.

Mobile software is an interesting industry. Potential customer base is theoretically the entire population. Current state of software on it is naive. Most of the popular software on mobile are interfacing software - either PC interfacing or web interfacing. One can for sure do much more with a device which is primarily used for networking, which is 24×7 connected to a network than just letting it be used for existing models and technologies. But the challenging part is how? You can make all the software you want for these devices, but how do you put it across to its intended audience. Unlike the PC software, people do not like to download software directly on their mobile phones. Most of the software that resides on the devices is usually the pre-installed software by the manufacturers, or the software pushed by the operators. So in this huge market, the only way of getting your technology to the people is through the OEMs or the operators - basically.

With a very heavy heart today I am standing at a juncture where I want to decide if I want to pursue mobile software any further. Its not about if I can/can not push my software through these channels, its more about do I really want to start a company whose backbone is so fragile. As of now it makes a little more sense to write desktop/web software which you can actually sell in the free market. Looking at the current state of affairs, having your software on mobiles looks more like a nice to have thing, than something which can act as a sole bread-earner for a company.

Let’s see when do I become a pro at riding this one.

BluXone has witnessed a whopping 1000+ downloads in the last one week. This is really a proud moment for me. The response has been very encouraging. I have been receiving inputs on how to make it better, I have received bug reports along with loads of encouraging words.

Definitely calls for a party here and a nice one at that. Didnt i tell you parties keep me going :D. Just kidding.
On a serious note, there are a couple of bugs that have been reported which need urgent attention. The release of Bluxone for Series 60 3rd Edition is also getting due. I am sure that will further improve the number of downloads and will make BluXone run on a complete range of Nokia smartphones.

So far so good.

While researching on ways through which I can get some estimate of location on a non gps device, I came across this very interesting link. Its called Herecast.
These guys are working on providing location information using Wifi access points. Quite cool. If I let some enthusiastic users collaboratively tell my system whats the location coordinates (or lets say name) of this access zone, and provide location based services to consumers around, I see some value there.
GPS does not work well inside the buildings. So if these two things work together - GPS in the open and HereCast inside the closed buildings (Wifi enabled) it can be quite a good offering.

I am wondering if a similar thing can also be done simply using internet access points and not just the Wifi. Let me do some research into it, and come back with results.

Finally, I have managed to find time to set up the BluXone blog. From now onwards, all my posts related to BluXone would land up there.
Do check it out.

http://www.bluxone.com/blog/