Mobile

The iPhone has been the darling of gadget lovers but its the Blackberry Storm that has been highly anticipated in enterprise circles. Research in Motion’s latest device that mimics many of the features introduced in the iPhone has, according to reports, been very well received.

Some of the features that are unique to the Storm are :

• Support for Microsoft Office documents
• Copy and Paste
• Tactile Feedback – to give a physical effect for keys pressed
• Support for both CDMA and GSM
• 3.2 MP camera
• Support for normal 3.5mm Jack for headphones

Features similar are automatic switching to portrait and landscape mode, on screen keyboards (some difference is there in the portrait mode). The device is available from Verizon Wireless. One real hard miss is the lack of support for WiFi. For $200 and a two year contract its a good alternative for the enterprise users mesmerized with the iPhone.

Originally posted on November 24, 2008 @ 8:49 pm

Google’s release of the search-by-voice application on iPhone has received rave reviews and may be indication of how things may finally be coming around for mobile applications. Voice search looks to be the kind of application that will create its niche as a localized search option of choice. The logic being that if I am searching for a restaurant, street or movie, there is a good chance that I don’t have the luxury or time to open my laptop, forget along having net connectivity.

The search by voice application has been found to be fairly accurate. It has also spurred a demand that the basic phone functions should also accept voice input. Interesting thing to note is that Google did not try to make this app available across only the Android based handsets first. Goes to show where they have their priorities (more search eyeballs than people using Android). And the fair accuracy of the service is a significant achievement considering that services get better over time.

Also, the new application fits the first criteria indicated by Google Vice President, Merissa Meyer a couple of month’s back.

First, why couldn’t I do these searches right then, when I needed to? Because search still isn’t accessible enough or easy enough. Search needs to be more mobile – it should be available and easy to use in cell phones and in cars and on handheld, wearable devices that we don’t even have yet.

So, what are the future indications. For one, we can fairly expect Android Software Stack to extend beyond the mobile devices front. A scenario with Embedded Internet access may not be that far fetched in Google’s radar. And yes, to have a link to the Google Voice Application, you can try here.

Originally posted on November 18, 2008 @ 10:32 am

We had mentioned mobile virtualization few months back. Now, VMware’s purchase of mobile virtualization company Trango Virtual Processors, based in Grenoble, France seems a definite move into a market that is very promising. The first mobile phones with this technology are expected to be available in 2010. The importance lies in the latest developments in mobile field. Google’s Android initiative, Nokia making the Symbian OS open source are some compelling reasons for companies to try to move from proprietary mobile software to open source ones. And virtualization attempts to address the migration issue.

This is best summarized in VMware’s mobile initiative:

As these capabilities increase, a mobile phone user’s persona—applications, pictures, videos, music, emails, bank info, credit card information, PIM all put together—is becoming much richer and more valuable than ever before. You want your persona to be portable so that it can transfer seamlessly when you upgrade to a new phone.

Supported OSs include Windows CE 5.0 and 6.0, Linux 2.6.x, Symbian 9.x, eCos, µITRON NORTi and µC/OS-II.

Virtualization has many advantages on the security front. With mobile devices, users are more isolated from what is happening behind the scene. Unlike PCs where you could have applications running that indicate more memory use or slow down, the limitations bore more threat from malicious applications running in the background. Virtuazation provides tighter control over what resources applications access and hence better control over devices.

The advantages of mobile virtualization are for businesses as well. Companies could develop their mobile applications on software stack that address a virtualized hardware and deploy it across multiple devices. It also allows easy porting of applications and data across devices.

Originally posted on November 11, 2008 @ 10:36 am

Apple’s iPhone has been a hit with the masses hooked to mobile internet. And hand-held gaming is one big market that the iPhone is touted to impact majorly. Games have been one among the most downloaded applications on from the AppStore and Apple stands to benefit from the easy centralized business model that it first introduced with its iTunes Music Store.

Sony and Nintendo are the current world leaders in the hand-held gaming segment. While the sale of iPhones could rival that of Nintendo’s DS consoles or Sony’s PSP, it would be a long while before Apple’s revenues from the games alone are substantial.

The iPhone’s interface has great many innovations but some of them are chagrin to the serious gamer e.g. lack of buttons. But recent events may pave a new coming for the age of hand held communication devices that also double up as awesome game consoles. T-Mobile’s G1 did show the kind of direction that technologies are bound to take. Innovations in one phone, when popular will be immediately taken up and replicated by other vendors as well. The Web based application store model means that users have access to their favorite applications / games at dead cheap rates.

The latest announcement of opening up of White Space to allow devices which could potentially provide broadband like internet over airwaves is another interesting development. Apple has its proven credentials in the Hardware + Software space. Apple could be leveraging this new development to further expand the reach of its applications-from-the-internet business model.

Originally posted on November 7, 2008 @ 10:13 am

Search on mobile devices continues to represent several hurdles and that means opportunities for firms looking to make a mark. The interface and the input mechanism are two of the major challenges in the mobile searching space.

An article at Technology Review mentions voice recognition, image processing and semantic technologies as forerunners to solving the web search on mobiles. As much as this points towards opportunities, there is also the mention of people looking for familiar or known brands. This implies that for a company looking to make a mark in the mobile space, a service that is already popular helps.

Looking at the technologies side of the question, semantic analysis is what seems most promising. All of our activities on the web are always backed by some intention or motive which again comes from an activity that we indulged in previously. If only there were a single program with offline / online representation so that it could make sense of the tasks that the user was performing, it could guess or suggest tags on the things we might be interested in searching. Take the example of a coder or developer – If you are working in an Integrated Developer environment and come across an error and then open your browser window there is a very good probability that you want to do a search on that error.

There are many computational challenges to making such a program available, that can communicate with any application that you would be working on But this is what the Semantic Web is trying to do – making web applications describe their data such that programs can use this metadata for further processing. And this will have many implications on the mobile web as well. Because when the user interface and input mechanisms seem limited, the solution has to address the problem of how to make user input on the mobile device minimal.

Originally posted on October 24, 2008 @ 12:17 pm

Recent developments in the mobile space may well be the sign of the way web based services will be made available across cell phones. There is stiff competition brewing between the handset makers. Now, it seems that the same is happening on the web applications side as well with FaceBook and MySpace trying to get the better of each other with integration deals with several telecommunication companies.

The articles in BusinessWeek give details on how Hutchison Whampoa is planning to make available a $50 handset from INQ supporting integration with FaceBook. Integration would imply ease of use. There are a whole number of web applications available but only the very popular ones would be in a position to support such integration.

One could argue that availability of services integrated with mobile devices makes the phone device as such less important. Could the mobile applications do to the mobile devices what the browser is doing to the Operating System on the desktop. As long as I can access my social networks, my favorite search engine, email account and a decent feed reader, how much more does the hardware matter?

Originally posted on October 13, 2008 @ 9:57 am