Colin Charles Agenda

Talk was given by Jaana Majakangas, from Nokia Corporation. I’ve been interested in NFC ever since I heard about it, as its something Maxis has been trialling for a while in Malaysia. It reminds me of rewinding back many years (maybe a decade ago?) when Celcom was trying to allow people to purchase a Coke from select vending machines, using SMS (no cash!). That never took off, but maybe NFC will be right, soon… Current limitation? Lack of devices - one in market (Nokia 6131) and another announced, but not in market. Also, the standard (JSR 257) has been extended by Nokia, which is always an issue for other implementers.

Some quick notes:

• JSR 257 is what this is all about.
• Simple wireless protocol between NFC compliant tags and devices in close proximity. New business opportunities for mobile operators, banks, retailers, transport operators, etc.
• You can share content between phones/pair devices like Bluetooth. You can get further information by “touching” smart posters. Your phone can be your credit card for payment… it can also be your travel card.
• Service discovery. Nokia has got extensions to the JSR 257 standard for this in their implementations.
• Think outside of the box, be innovative, the technology is there, there are many use cases
• Contactless communication API has been around since 2004. RFID tag, smart card, visual tags. Java applications to access the hardware capabilities (RFID for instance).
  - NDEF tag (RFID tag, with NFC standard)
• There is a dedicated Connection interface for different targets. You will get a notification when a transaction has happened.
• When you discover a target, the application will get a notification. It has the URL that you will open the connection with. Communicate… then close connection.
• Nokia 6131 NFC has extensions to JSR 257: get the SDK at Forum Nokia. The extension also includes the peer-to-peer communication framework. In a modified version of JSR 257, the P2P communication will exist soon as well.
• Business cards that go to NFC devices and contact details are there? Wow, this is Business Card 2.0 :)
• NFC works within less than 10cm. Its pretty “near”.
• “Touch to share bookmark”… touch two devices together, and voila! there is instant sharing. I’m reminded of old Palm ads when they were pushing their IR technology and beaming business cards across trains between a man and a woman!
• NFC enables new consumer services with mobile devices. Take away that you should just be creative, and lots can happen.

Chris Blizzard, now working at Mozilla and Linux integration, gave a most interesting talk, about Mozilla, and their new mobile initiatives. We managed to speak (but not nearly enough) about the mobile strategy afterwards (i.e. I think limiting it to the n810 or tablet like devices alone, seems myopic; phones are where its at), and I hope the conversation continues. Now for some quick notes.

- mozilla.org, is where products create motion. Been around for just over 10 years now
- Mozilla targets human beings (not developers)
- Focus on protecting open standards
- “Creating Joy!” for users
- Avoid feature creep (this is the secret of add-ons) - control the product, and just say, go build an extension. It isn’t just about customising your experience, but its about keeping the core experience joyous and uncluttered.
- Fix real problems on the web (i.e. pop-up blocking)
- 500 contributors to Firefox 3, 75 Localization teams, 200 people, 11,000 patches, 165+ Million users, added +45 million users in the last 6 months, and doubled in the last year - these are impressive statistics (I for one, am impressed by their developer community)
- Who are we targeting? Read Seth Godin’s blog entry “Why downloading Firefox is like getting into college“. Also, Stephen O’Grady’s Blog “Ode to the Common Man“
- Bring the full web to mobile. FF3 is where great technology for mobile exists.
- Apple has reset the idea of what the Internet on a mobile should be, thanks to the iPhone. They’ve definitely opened up the market for mobile based browsers. Note, no reason to redesign your website for mobiles in the future…
- Fennec - mobile browser experience
- Performance numbers on the n810 - faster than MicroB and WebKit. Not even optimised for ARM (i.e. no atomic locking), but already at a headstart
- Fennec will support add-ons. Touch and keypad versions are coming soon… Keep in mind all this is just getting started
- Android includes WebKit as part of the base platform. Mozilla on Android? Not quite yet, since Google wants only Java based applications. No mention of native applications yet from Google.
- Not really considered Series 60 (it would be nice), no talk of PalmOS, there is some form of Windows Mobile version, but its not released
- Gecko is hard to embed, in comparison to WebKit. The technology needs to improve, so that the gap that WebKit has, doesn’t widen further

Technorati Tags: gecko, webkit, mozilla, chris blizzard, lugradio, lugradio live usa, nokia, handhelds, tablets, mobile web, firefox, community, fennec, android

Not long ago I returned from Mobile Monday Melbourne, and this month I got to see Manny Christophidis from Streamezzo give a talk about what they do. Being my first Mobile Monday event, I had a great amount of fun and learning, and found out that many used MySQL in their work, sometimes passively without even knowing what database sat below them.

Surprised I was, to learn that this event had been going on for nearly two years. If you’re not in the mobile space, you tend to miss out on this not-very-well advertised event, I guess. Seeing as there are more mobile phones being sold these days than personal computers, I think this space is going to get even larger in time to come.

Back to Streamezzo. They make mobile clients, that are really lightweight (100kb Java, and about 200kb Symbian), that realistically serve as ad clients. As common sense would have it, they’ve found that putting ads at the application start and end seem to work the best (i.e. notice when fring is loading, it has a silly message saying “fring is loading…” - replace that with a targeted ad, Streamezzo says) and annoy the user the least.

Streamezzo’s server requires Java and can have either an Oracle or MySQL 4 (or greater) database. Back-end OS can be either Windows 2000 and up or Red Hat Linux.

Some of the more interesting things they’ve done is that they’ve re-skinned an entire mobile phone, and made the device home screen the actual portal. This ensures folk can pull down data based on the location (cell) they’re in. With all the modern rave about the online desktop, man, this sounds like an early version of the online mobile phone.

Applications they developed that caught my eye included:

• a promo for Nelly Furtado, which delivered rich media music (and video). One could preview songs from her latest album, buy the song, buy a ringtone, or preview video clips. These previews incidentally were controlled at the server (so they’re full-length songs in reality, but the server only pushes out say, 5s for a preview). The mashup with online chat seems to make this app pretty cool - if you’re a Nelly fan who got this app downloaded, you’re bound to want to chat to other Nelly fans
• a client for vpod.tv, which is the French version of YouTube. They speak video publishing for the masses, and they definitely use MySQL for their back-end as well

Sadly, Streamezzo’s stuff isn’t open source. They claim that with knowledge of XML, you should be able to create applications pretty quickly. Apparently it can set you back 0.75 Euro cents per active mobile client per month; this doesn’t include the minimum establishment fee as well. One might really be better off with Flash Lite (though I wonder how the free/OSS tools for creation of content fare).

In other quick news, omg.tv organise the event, and one of their specialities is Second Life, and more importantly, the Second Life Cable Network slcn.tv! I’ve got to give this Second Life thing a try, soon. Also, MTX Media develop a lot of primarily Symbian software, but also do Java based stuff and they’ve got some cool things that are out there - a targeted ad for Honda that gives users information about all available Honda’s, but what I found most useful is the Yellow Cab app - book a taxi, via the mobile web, without ever having to make a phone call! Coming to Melbourne in under-3 months, as its proven to work in Sydney. MTX back-ends are all MySQL Enterprise based, for what its worth.

Technorati Tags: mobile monday, mobile monday melbourne, mysql, streamezzo, mobile client, advertising, rich media applications, second life, mtx, java, symbian