Mobile Watch

December 22, 2006

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

Accessing the Internet from cell phones is possible but the experience is poor. Mobile web browser performance is clunky, few web sites are designed for cell phone access, and the customer bill can be astronomical.

I recently spoke with Alexa Raad, who heads up marketing and business development at dotMobi, a startup whose mission is to make the mobile Internet an everyday reality instead of an expensive curiosity. A key part of its strategy is establishing the domain name extension .mobi to designate web sites that support mobile browsers.

But why should businesses buy a .mobi extension when their web servers already detect the type of browser and can be set up to automatically serve up a mobile version of a web page?

"The extension tells users that the web site supports mobile browsers and conforms to standards that guarantee a fast download and probably has low access costs," says Ms Raad. "Some web pages can cost users as much as $10 to download because they aren't designed for mobile devices or the developers aren't aware of the costs."

The operators of .mobi web sites agree to abide by three mandatory rules: no use of frames on the web sites because these are difficult to render by mobile web browsers; no use of the www prefix in the name of the web site; use of XML in creating web sites. If these rules aren't met, dotMobi has the right to revoke the use of the .mobi extension.

These are very easy conditions to meet, and most regular web sites would already be compliant anyway, because these are best practices for any kind of site. This doesn't mean they would be mobile-friendly.

To produce web sites that load fast on mobile devices, and won't cost users a fortune in data costs, takes much more effort. That's why dotMobi has created free development packages and support forums for developers to cut the cost of creating .mobi sites. Tools include ways to calculate the cost of downloading a web page depending upon the data package of the wireless carrier.

The company is funded by Nokia, Microsoft, Vodafone and other strategic investors. The money is used to create the development tools, plus there is revenue from registering .mobi and common extensions.

"We want to make sure that the user experience with .mobi sites is good. We don't want a few bad apples spoiling the neighborhood, that's why we will cancel registrations if web site owners don't abide by mandatory rules," says Ms Raad.

But the biggest obstacle to the realization of dotMobi's mission are the wireless carriers. They have stuck customers with hundreds of dollars in charges because of complex Internet data packages. Combined with the poor performance of mobile browsers, many early users of the mobile Internet have already been turned off from the experience.

Ms Raad is very much aware of this issue, but hopes that the wireless carriers will come up with inexpensive Internet access packages. "Europe is much further ahead in this area than we are in the US, so I'm hoping that things will change," she says. She adds that wireless carriers are among investors in dotMobi.

Foremski's Take: The wireless carriers aren't going to give up their lucrative gateway position. They make a fortune standing between the mobile Internet and the consumer.

Even if tens of thousands of high quality .mobi web sites spring up, that won't mean much because the wireless carriers can easily substitute their online services, or those of partners.

They won't need to block .mobi sites but they can make them a click or three further away. And on the cramped user interface of mobile devices, that's like sending .mobi sites to Siberia.

There are also other obstacles created by the wireless carriers.  A senior executive from a startup mobile search firm told me that video services from major wireless carriers hog much of available wireless data bandwidth, cutting off even the partners of wireless carriers.

The promises of the mobile Internet, at least in the US, won't arrive until there are ways of getting around the wireless carriers. Technologies such as WiMAX, which offers high speed wireless data across large distances, could get around the gateway stranglehold.

Intel (an SVW sponsor) is working on making WiMAX capabilities standard in notebook computers, and others are working on the WiMAX infrastructure. But it will be several years before WiMAX based services are widely available.

In short, the mobile Internet will be a long time coming, blocked by the greed of wireless carriers. These companies are rapidly becoming the largest obstacle to technological progress and the development of Internet economies, IMHO.

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Please also see:

 

Intel Breakthrough Demonstrates Its First Mobile WiMAX Baseband Chip

 

An excerpt from the dotMobi Blog: dotMobi

...some of the more recent  smart phones (e.g. the Nokia N90 and N70 series) are being shipped with the Web Kit browser that can render normal desktop sites such as Amazon without any problems. However, there are 4 major problems with this approach:

1. These advanced phones represent a tiny percentage of the phones in use around the world. We should concern ourselves more with the ~2.5 billion other “normal” phones. Yes, these advanced abilities will likely trickle down to other phones, but this will take a long time.
2. Phones will always be less capable than PCs due to the physical size limitations. You simply can’t fit a big screen and keyboard in a small phone. There will always be a capabilities gap, regardless of how good the phones get.
3. Just because you can visit a PC site on a phone, it doesn’t mean you necessarily want to. Mobile is different. Mobile browsing is much less about random surfing than it is about targeted, time & location-specific tasks. Experience has shown that you can’t simply miniaturize a site for mobile—to be truly mobile-friendly and useful, a site needs to be designed for mobile, not just squeezed into a smaller space. Some people argue that mobile should be considered another channel entirely, and that it is a mistake to think about it in the same way.
4. Viewing a PC site on a phone can be very expensive because of all the graphics that need to be downloaded. The cost issue alone is enough to make this unfeasible for many users. Example: the cnn.com homepage would cost as much as €7 to view on a phone based on some data plans in Europe.

Link to: dotMobi Mobile browser advances do not remove the the need for mobile-friendly sites

December 22, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: dotMobi
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October 12, 2006

No need for a "pod" UpSnap offers free access to podcasts via cell phones

By Tom Foremski for Silicon Valley Watcher

There is no need to own an iPod or an MP3 player to listen to podcasts if you use UpSnap's free mobile phone based service.

I recently met with UpSnap, the free 411 SMS messaging service which has added a large entertainment service. Through a simple interface users can create a playlist of subscribed podcasts and listen to them through their cell phones.

It's a very large potential user base, there are about 210m SMS capable cell phones in the US. In addition, there is no software download or installation required.

"Podcasts have proved to be very popular, but they have one problem, you need an iPod," said Tony Philipp, CEO of UpSnap. "We've extended the reach of this popular media so that anyone can access podcasts anywhere at anytime using any mobile phone."

The service is free except for a small number of premium podcasts. It is based on a streaming voice technology called SWInG (Streaming Wireless Internet Gateway)from XSVoice - a company it acquired in January 2006. The revenues come from merchants that pay UpSnap on an SMS text-to-call model. A short advert after each podcast enables listeners to connect to merchants.

Once a user has selected their podcasts and they are ready to listen, they text a short one word message to the service which then queues up their podcasts and starts streaming the content.

"The service is for media junkies who want branded content from ESPN, NASCAR, as well as access to niche music, they can have it all on demand on their mobile phone," said Mr Philipp.

It's a clever use of text messaging combined with mobile phone technologies to provide a large library of podcast content, ranging from hip-hop, to technology, to Sunday church sermons. And it frees podcasts from the "pod" and the PC. It essentially transforms a cell phone into a pocket media server.

The UpSnap entertainment service makes use of the spare capacity of the voice networks of the carriers, of which there is a relative abundance compared with their data networks. Since most users have free calling plans at weekends and evenings they don't have to pay a penny to access thousands of podcasts.

Another cool feature of the service is that it allows listeners to send a voicemail to the podcaster--it turns a podcast into a two-way medium.

Web sites with podcasts display a small RSS button that show that their content is available through cell phones. I'd like to try it out next time I'm at SFMOMA, which offers podcasts that guide visitors through its exhibitions.

October 12, 2006 | Permalink | Comment on this post | Tag: Mobile Watch
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SPONSORWATCH TIBCO TIBCO's First Hardware Delivers Quantum Leap Performance – Changing the Game for Enterprise IT TIBCO Positioned as a Leader for SOA Governance in 2009 Magic Quadrant TIBCO Contributes General Interface to the Open Source Community Comments Tom Foremski on 10 Basic Digital Publishing Skills Journalists/Anyone Should Know... Yes, you can change the video size to whatever you'd like. Just take a look at the embedd code. Cog on 10 Basic Digital Publishing Skills Journalists/Anyone Should Know... I think I would pass almost all of them, but how do you resize a youtube or other embedded video to fit a web page's size? I know you have to keep the dimensions proportional, but can you just change the height and width, or is there something else you have to follow? Mike on Startups In LA... Building The West Coast Corridor Of Innovation - 1400 miles Long There is no place like the West Coast for innovation Sandy Kotch on Startups In LA... Building The West Coast Corridor Of Innovation - 1400 miles Long I love the feeling of innovation for 1400 miles- that is the West Coast! Having moved from San Francisco to Santa Monica in the late 90s and being in start-up modes with companies for a majority of that time, it is great to confirm my true feelings all along - that we are in the innovative crux: California! Couldn't agree more that the creative energy in LA is bound to drive the technology here, it is a great place to be - although often expensive to do business! Tom Foremski on Social Media Is Not About Conversations... It's About Something Much More Amazing David: I don't think the problem is finding a new term for a stilted conversation, but that 'conversation' is misleading when applied to social media because it's about something that is much more exciting and amazing. Conversation is a red herring when it comes to understanding this next phase of the Internet... David Shantz on Social Media Is Not About Conversations... It's About Something Much More Amazing I beleive that the nomenclatures may be what's failing us. None of our current lexicon really fits exactly: A CONVERSATION is really an exchange of ideas, with each response being dependant on the other and with the overall context... A DISCOURSE is more of a formal debate. PUBLICATION is as you say, to make content available publicly (but seems not to have enough emphasis on exhange) Perhaps we need a new word. "Publicly sharing an idea that is Doug Millison on Social Media Is Not About Conversations... It's About Something Much More Amazing I enjoyed reading this. McLuhan is worth re-reading, especially his book THE MECHANICAL BRIDE. Digital media are bringing us back to something like the manuscript era, where readers were usually writers who compiled their own books. Now we're creating & compiling our own "books" -- sometimes we call them "blogs" -- by mixing text & image & sound/music online. My "prose+comics scrapbook" format makes this explicit & ushers in a new, interactive scribal epoque, as we let readers become co-cr Bud Gibson on Social Media Is Not About Conversations... It's About Something Much More Amazing I agree with your bounds on what constitutes non-conversation, but somewhere in between is conversation. Ten to fifteen comments is often quite interactive. There are also side conversations that can happen in those large comment streams you mention. I've particularly seen this in some buzz threads. Another small point of contention: you're using a term, publishing, which is increasingly becoming archaic. I tend to think of it as having been replaced by three distinct activities: Seth Grimes on Social Media Is Not About Conversations... It's About Something Much More Amazing Personally, I think "conversation" works quite nicely, but I'd guess I'd define "conversation" more expansively than you do. Actually, I kind of like the WordNet definition: "the use of speech for informal exchange of views or ideas or information etc." (http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=conversation), which fits what we're doing on/with social media. In any case, I wouldn't get hung up on conversation/publication. Isn't the point that social media supports both back-and-f Dave Kellogg on Social Media Is Not About Conversations... It's About Something Much More Amazing I love the McLuhan quote. If you read the comment streams on blogs, it's usually not a conversation. It's usually what an old boss of mine used to call "parallel independent conversations" which is very much in line with the notion of two-way publishing. Chris Dymond on Social Media Is Not About Conversations... It's About Something Much More Amazing Question for me is: is it sufficient and to the greatest benefit for legal frameworks to simply consider social media as publishing, or should they adapt to consider a new category - something like a 'permanent conversation'? In other words should it hold people accountable in the same way it does when the act of publishing and hence the motivations of the publisher are clear? Seems to me that the normative effect of maintaining that legal stance will be to force a change in behaviou Andrew on Farmville valued $1B More Than Twitter By The Smart Money The Microsoft deal with Facebook included an advertising deal--the $240M was for a share of the company and for the ad deal. Thus, saying they bought at a valuation of $15B is significantly inaccurate. Tom Foremski on Tech Giants Struggle With Copy And Paste... George, sarcasm sometimes gets lost in translation, my apologies. Daphne on Analysis: Could $GOOG Face Problems Outside Of China For Its Opposition To Chinese Government? The Chinese governement has this stigma attached to it, basically don't mess with them. If google is mad enough to take them on, I wouldn't put it past them buying google and sacking the moron who made the decision. George on Tech Giants Struggle With Copy And Paste... And that significant lead will result from...adding something Apple has already added? And that make sense to you? Steve "@PodcastSteve" Lubetkin on Dirty Little Secrets: Social Media Is Terrible At Promoting Products Tom, you and I are of the same mind on this. I am so tired of reading blogs or listening to podcasts or watching video embeds about social media people using social media to talk about social media. I really want to hear about specific business uses of social media. As I've said frequently, we need to remember that these tools are just communications channels, and we'll all be better off when we reach that day when it will sound really silly to hear a news headline like "Tom Foremski used Twi Tom Nocera on Analysis: Financial Times Says GOOG Has Detailed Plans To Close China Search An excellent analysis, Tom Foremski. I think there could be a great long term benefit for Google by its foray into China. By the timing of its very prominent presence there, coming during the great boom in Internet usage and awareness, Google's retreat, may become a kind of catalyst in the long term memories of tech savvy Chinese...the leaders of tomorrow. I forecast a triumphant return for Google one day, and it will be without the curse of censorship which only helps governments to contro Jonathan Mendez on Why Ad Networks And Exchanges Will Never Help Publishers Great post. I believe publishers can have advertising supported businesses. In fact I don't think that's debatable. First though they need better tools to leverage their audience data and their own ad matching systems. Essentially they need to build a new improved display channel. New pub controlled networks could then emerge that would crush the performance of what exists today. Then all the margin eating middle men would vanish and both ends of the transaction get yet more value from the m Tom Foremski on Is the Future Of News Dependent On The Generosity Of Billionaire Philanthropists? Eric, What's wrong with making a reasonable profit as a news organization? I agree with you that there is a race to the bottom going on because the econopmics of online news continue to worsen. At some point, we have to figure out how to reward news organizations doing a good job otherwise we are in serious trouble as a society. That's what I would like to see Mr Hellman's money go towards -- figuring out a solution to one of the most difficult problems we have. There's not Tom Foremski on Techmeme's Gabe Rivera Is More Editor Than Aggregator... Gabe: You should get a press pass and if you don't, you should ban SXSW stories from Techmeme. (SXSW gets very noisy, you'd be doing us all a big favor :)   Silicon Valley Watcher--reporting on the business and culture of disruption. © Tom Foremski 2004 - 2009 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-noDerivs 2.5. Details of license.