I spent the day at MobileCampSF, A BarCamp "unconference" focused on mobile development and monetization. MobileCamp is a a loosely structured gathering open to all mobile enthusiasts. Anyone can present on any mobile related topic in whatever format they desire. MobileCamps have been held in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The first San Francisco Camp was a great event so i was eager to attend today's sequel. I wasn't disappointed, MobileCamp was expertly organized by Indira, Ritwik, Andy and Alexis and sponsorship by Nokia Nseries and Forum Nokia made the event free for attendees. I spent the entire day at MobileCamp and attended 8 sessions.
First up was Chris Price of PhoneNews.com with Social Networking for Device Manufacturers. Chris, who graduated from college a few days ago, just launched a startup, MechaWorks and released its first comercial product MobileWiki, a Wiki based product support platform targeted at device manufacturers. The idea is that someone like Nokia or a Samsung would use PhoneWiki to enhance product support and build brand loyalty. It's a managed wiki similar in concept to Wikipedia where users can post questions, tips and reviews on each product in a manufacturer's lineup. Mechaworks hosts and manages the Wiki making sure content meets quality guidelines; doing things like editing posts to remove information that a vendor wouldn't want to share or endorse like as unlock codes. Or the the software can be purchased and self hosted and manged.
MobileWiki's design scales to provide easy access to specific information on thousands of handset models. It lets a vendor leverage their most informed users to enhance product support with round the clock answers to questions. The platform is completely customizable so that site layout and design will meet corporate standards for look and feel. MobileWiki is built on top on MediaWiki, the same platform that WikiPedia uses. The core MediaWiki code is not alterted, simplifying upgades.
I asked Chris if the PhoneWiki web platform was optimized for use with mobile browsers. He said that it currently wasn't but that this feature was allowed for in the design and could easily be added on request. He suggested that a mobile version should ideally be read-only as posts from mobiles tend to be crytptic text-talk. I think he sells the keying abilities of mobile users short. I use the Opera Mini forum at MyOpera.com where many posts are mobile originated and, while there are occasional unintelligible posts, the overall quality is actually quite high. Incidentally the full-web version of Phone Encyclopedia works well with Opera Mini or Webkit.
If you would like to see PhoneWiki in action, look at PhoneNews.coms' Phone Encyclopedia which is built on PhoneWiki.
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Next Juhana Hiletala from Nokia did a nice survey of the Mobile Application Development landscape particularly as it relates to Nokia phones.
He listed the main mobile development platforms in approximate order of increasing development complexity as; Mobile Web, Flash Lite, Java ME and native C++. Each has its strengths and weaknesses with some better suited to one or the other of the Nokia device platforms; S30, S40, S60 and Maemo
The Browser is the most universal and portable platform. Content distribution is far easier than any other but power is limited. This is changing with full-web, Ajax enabled browsers like WebKit and widget platforms like Web Run Time (WRT) becoming common. He dropped a hint that Nokia might be working on a WebKit-like browser and possibly even a WRT for S40 phones.
Flash Lite offers ease of development and power but has been held back by limited availability of compatabile devices. That's changing with Nokia now bundling Flash Lite with all S60 and most S40 phones.
Java Me - is a highly fragmented platform making development of sophisticated applications difficult. But with a base of 1.5 billion active Java handsets including all S40 and S60 phones it is the number one platform for developing installable applications.
C++ on S60. A challenging development environment that offers the ultimate in power and access to hardware. Development is costly and doing some" interesting" things requires signing and certification further increasing cost, effort and difficulty. Hiletala defended certification as necessary to meet regulatory requirements giving the example that 911 "must always work", but admitted that it's hard for developers to make money on native S60 applications.
In the Q&A session, Hiletala suggested that Qtopia by Trolltech, which Nokia recently acquired, could be coming to phones.
In response to a question about Python, he said that he likes Python, but that Nokia didn't consider it a product so much as an Open Source community development which they support.
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The morning session ended with a fun game where the participants divided up into teams of three. Each team has 15 minutes to create a mobile product concept including a functional design, marketing plan, revenue source, logo and tag line. The product name had to consist of two words from a random list of about 30. I teamed up with Richard Galbraith from WOMWorld and Rudy Rullan from Chikka. We did pretty well finishing in second place with GreenFreckles, an SMS response and mobile web based social service to encourage recycling. GreenFreckles connects users who have items they want
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posted by Dennis Bournique
June 15, 2008 @ 12:37 am
7 View Comments
