PEPS 1

Mobile AJAX

The following text is an extended version of an introductory article I recently wrote for the .net magazine and it is meant to further illustrate what can be found in my slides that I used during my presentations about Mobile AJAX at the XML conference 2006 in Boston and during the “Webmontag” in February in Munich.

The slides are available as a PDF document.

I am a web developer, so as a result my view on the topic is limited. Keeping it as pragmatic as possible and finding out what can be done right now are my main goals.

Mobile AJAX is a huge buzz word. Naturally there is a lot confusion going on about what it is and what it does. Opinions range from Mobile AJAX being a “significant mistake” to having enough “disruptive potential” to replace installable applications, i.e. J2ME apps.

The mobile web grows rapidly, data plans are becoming increasingly affordable, even flat rates for mobile data access appear on the horizon. Also browsers on mobile devices, such as cell phones or gaming consoles are becoming increasingly capable…It’s about time to spice up mobile web applications with a little AJAX!

Using AJAX brings numerous advantages for web applications, especially when looking at mobile devices: loading only parts of documents shrinks traffic and results in better response times and an application-like feeling.

Mobile devices have rather constrained capabilities in terms of CPU performance, memory, battery lifetime, screen size and bandwidth. Furthermore web browsers on mobile devices usually fail to provide the necessary technologies and standards such as JavaScript, CSS and DOM.

Still the situation in mobile browsers is not as bad as you might expect. There are numerous browsers that currently support AJAX: Opera Mobile (not mini), IE Mobile, Nokia S60 (3rd ed., WebCore) and Minimo (Mozilla). Also NetFront and the OpenWave browser should be mentioned. Their newest/upcoming versions also support AJAX.

The basic technology in Mobile AJAX is not different from desktop browsers. Basically the XMLHttpRequest object (XHR) or an equivalent ActiveX is used to handle asynchronous communications.

One way to go is to use the smallest common denominator of your target group (in terms of browser capabilities). Then implement your web application for that, write simple, clean, semantically correct markup and add additional bells and whistles in an unobtrusive manner with JavaScript.

Also remember that DOM manipulations cause heavy CPU and memory load. It might be a good idea not to access web services directly to handle the XML, but to route access through a server-side script that returns pre-generated HTML.

Another big issue is power consumption, because “looping” JavaScript can drain the power quite heavily. Therefore plan ahead and use XHR on demand!

While Mobile AJAX is well worth looking into, it should not be done just for the sake of it. Unfortunately the use of existing AJAX frameworks and toolkits, such as Prototype or dojo is practically impossible due to their focus on desktop browsers and a rather big functional overhead (drag-and-drop). A mobile AJAX framework (for mobile web browsers) would be a real helper, but does not exist yet.

Via: Pavingways - Rocco Georgi

Skype-To-Mobile Solution Provider iSkoot Raises $7 Million Second Round

iSkoot, which providers a plug-in software that lets users access Skype and other similar internet-based calling services using mobile phones, has raised a second round of $7 million led by Charles River Ventures. Three previous investors—Khosla Ventures, ZG Ventures, and Jesselson Capital Corp.—took part in the new round. The company raised $6.2 million in its first round. The company will use the funds to expand its sales, R&D and marketing efforts. iSkoot has established partnerships with mobile operator 3 and Skype, which have joined to launch a Skype-to-mobile service. iSkoot software will come preloaded on certain phones, including Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets.
Via: Moconews

Bling Software Launches First Ajax Client for Mobile Handset

Jay-Z, Barry Bonds, Amp’d Mobile and GoTV Networks Among First
to Deliver the Most Dynamic Mobile Applications Ever

Palm Desert, Calif., January 30, 2007 – DEMO 2007 – Today at DEMO 2007, Bling Software, Inc. unveils the first Ajax-based (Asynchronous, JavaScript, XML) Web client for the mobile handset. With this announcement, Bling Software enables companies to build and deliver the most visually stunning and data-rich applications ever available on the mobile handset. For the first time, consumers can enjoy dynamic mobile applications from Bling Software’s early customers including Jay-Z, Barry Bonds, Ninja Mobile, The Onion, Amp’d Mobile and GoTV Networks.

Although the number of mobile handsets significantly outnumbers PCs, to date, dynamic mobile applications have been too costly and much too complex to develop, port and distribute. Bling Software is the first fully extensible, cross-platform, JavaScript-enabled client (the Bling Player™) for the mobile handset that is small enough to be distributed over the air to consumers. Mobile content owners can now create truly fast and dynamic mobile applications in a matter of days and then mass distribute them to mobile consumers. The Bling Player reduces the time, cost and complexity of developing state of the art mobile applications.

“The likes of Apple, Google and Yahoo have made the Ajax programming model a success on the desktop, and now, Bling Software is the first to bring it to the mobile handset,” said Seamus McAteer, senior analyst, M:Metrics, the Mobile Market Authority. “The highly interactive experience seen in leading-edge desktop-based Web pages or Widgets, can now be experienced on the mobile handset. Bling Software’s approach blows away the complexity barrier for creating mobile content.”

“Bling Software allows us to create a better user experience while also getting to market much faster,” said David Bluhm, CEO, GoTV. “With Bling, our Mobile Video Portals™ can now be created by anyone with a Web development background so we can focus 100 percent on creating a better user experience.”

“We’ve unlocked the world’s largest applications market,” said Roy Satterthwaite, CEO and co-founder, Bling Software. “We removed the barriers so virtually any content owner can provide the mobile consumer a superior user experience.”

Bling Software is currently available.

Via: bringsotfware

Adobe's Narayen sees growth in video, mobile

Interview: Adobe's president discusses the importance of providing developers with tools that work across several platforms

With its acquisition of Macromedia in late 2005, Adobe Systems won control of the Flash technology that has become a nearly ubiquitous way of authoring and viewing interactive and multimedia content on the Web. Now, the 25-year-old software company with deep roots in creative applications and an iron grip on electronic documents thanks to its de facto-standard PDF document format, has its eye on development and content presentation across all sorts of platforms and devices.

President and COO Shantanu Narayen recently sat down with a group of IDG journalists to talk about the opportunities that mobile platforms and digital video present for Adobe. Joined by David Mendels, senior vice president of the enterprise and developer solutions business unit, Narayen also described the company's hopes for its multiplatform runtime environment, code-named Apollo, that is designed to run Web applications using Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax, and PDF and is due for public beta release later this year.

IDG: What are the key areas of growth for Adobe?

Narayen: Clearly, the creative customer is still a very important customer to us, and there what we're trying to do is enable them to create content across print and the Web, but also increasingly video and wireless. We're seeing a tremendous explosion of digital video, which we think is a huge growth area for us. And also wireless because creating content for wireless devices is very hard. So in the next version of our Creative Suite applications, we're going to be looking to dramatically expand how we can help people create content. This year, we're going to be releasing Creative Suite 3, which will be the first generation of applications that combines products like Photoshop and Illustrator from Adobe and Dreamweaver and Flash from Macromedia.

We think Apollo is going to enable a new generation of applications that combines the power of the desktop as well as the interactivity and connectedness of the Internet.

IDG: Tell us more about your plans for the mobile data arena.

Narayen: We work a lot with handset manufacturers and operators. The current offerings we have include Flash Lite on the client. Handset manufacturers or operators can provide a really compelling experience, and people using these phones can browse the Web and get Flash content.

What's even more exciting is that we now have a new service we're offering through operators called FlashCast.... What we've introduced is a new metaphor, a TV-channel-like metaphor, which allows you to have, say, weather or news or sports or specialized channels. You now have the ability to subscribe -- all the data is automatically sent down to your phone. We've introduced FlashCast services in conjunction with [NTT] DoCoMo. This server-based offering, it's more subscription based, [so] it's an ongoing revenue stream, for us as well as for the mobile operator.

Moving forward ... Apollo, the runtime will also be mobile-aware. The benefit to a developer or an enterprise or to an author is you author once, and you have the runtime everywhere, you have the ability to run applications everywhere. So that clearly is why we think that we have the ability to provide all the authoring, all the runtime, and a way to deploy it in a scaleable way in an enterprise.

IDG: How do you see your competitive stance versus Microsoft right now, especially with its Expression Web tool?

Narayen: We certainly compete with Microsoft; however we've competed with them in the past, and I think that's an important thing to also remember. We competed with them in print technology very early on. We competed with them in fonts, we competed with them in imaging for many years. We competed with them on the Web for years,. Dreamweaver versus Frontpage. You know, as it relates to the creative community, we still believe we understand that creative community. And that community wants a heterogeneous environment.

Mendels: The fundamental issue is cross-platform. There's almost no one I talk to who doesn't want to either be heterogeneous and work on Linux or Mac or Windows, or want the option in the future to do that.... If developers want to build things, express themselves heterogeneously across the Web, across devices, you know, that isn't Microsoft's strength. They've got a lot of strengths, but that's not their strength. Their big opportunity is people who have a Microsoft end-to-end environment.

IDG: Adobe has a long history as a software company -- over the years, how have you seen business models in software change?

Narayen: If you think about the company, it's actually changed very dramatically over these 25 years. We started with a completely royalty model. With Postscript, we had HP and IBM and Apple as large customers, and that was the business model, royalty based. And we built a very successful applications business on top of that. And then we moved into the enterprise, and that's license revenue, it's consulting services, etcetera.... So we already today have some very different business models all sort of coexisting in our overall company's financial model, which is clearly very successful and profitable one. Clearly, we see the trend toward both delivery of software through hosted mechanisms and subscriptions and the ability to monetize it differently. Second is the need for us, for a certain set of customers, to not monetize it by charging them for it but through other advertising mechanisms.... It's the spectrum of delivery and business models. Piracy is huge for us in other countries, and that [advertising-supported model] is a way in certain countries to also monetize.

IDG: What might be some applications you could offer in this way?

Narayen: Well, take video. With YouTube, right now people just have the ability to upload a video. Wouldn't it be really cool if we provided something that enabled people to do basic video editing through a hosted service, or image editing through a hosted service, or even run your entire enterprise offerings as a hosted service?

(IDG News Service Senior Writer China Martens and Infoworld Assistant News Editor Paul Roberts joined Heichler in conducting the interview in Boston.)

Via: infoworld

Technorati Tags: Mobile

Vidéo sur Internet : Brightcove lève 45 millions d'euros

rightcove, plate-forme modulable de partage de vidéo, vient de boucler un troisième tour de table de 45 millions d’euros. Le service s’attaque ainsi à l’international fort d’une valorisation de 160 millions d’euros qui le place dans la cour des grands.

2007 : bienvenue dans l'année du combat des titans de la vidéo sur Internet. YouTube, Joost, DailyMotion, Vodeo.tv, Blip.tv, tous ces concurrents déjà nombreux et aux stratégies différentes vont pourtant devoir encore faire de la place à un nouvel entrant : Brightcove. Le service vient de réaliser un troisième tour de table de près de 45 millions d'euros qui porte son financement total à 60 millions d'euros. Pour se différencier, Brightcove se positionne comme un site de destination mais aussi comme une plate-forme de diffusion modulable.

Lancé depuis fin 2005, Brightcove s'était déjà fait remarqué en annonçant deux premiers tours de tables d'un total de 15 millions d'euros et des actionnaires influents tels que AOL ou le fonds d'investissement Accel Partners notamment présent au capital de Bittorrent ou encore Wallmart.com.

Le service de vidéo à la demande confirme ses ambitions en annonçant une nouvelle levée de fonds de 45 millions d'euros réalisée auprès de Maverick Capital, Brookside Capital ou encore du New York Times. Cette prise de participation record confère ainsi à Brightcove - selon des sources proches du dossier - une valorisation globale de 160 millions d'euros qui propulse la société du statut d'outsider au rang de challenger. Objectif de la société : développer son service à l'international et gagner des parts de marché.

Brightcove propose une plate-forme de diffusion de vidéo modulable qui permet aussi bien à des particuliers qu'à des professionnels et des grands médias de créer une chaîne de TV Internet paramétrable. L'interface intuitive permet ainsi aux utilisateurs de diffuser leurs contenus vidéo sur leurs propres sites par le biais d'un lecteur exportable clef en main. Le service propose le partage des revenus publicitaires avec les diffuseurs des vidéos. Ces derniers peuvent également et directement vendre ou louer leurs contenus aux internautes.

Autre spécificité, Brightcove permet à ses clients - grands médias et particuliers - d'administrer et de modérer leurs propres plates-formes de contenus générés par leurs visiteurs. Warner Bros, SonyBMG ou encore Monster.com sont déjà clients de cette solution.

Technorati Tags: Thierry PEPIN

Why iPhone won't revolutionize the mobile web landscape

...at least not in the short-term.

First things first: If you plan on buying an Apple iPhone this June, you better get in line in front of me, because I'll have $500 ready to leave my hands the minute the first one's available. I couldn't be more elated about the announcement and more appreciative of the incredible development effort on Apple's part.

Several people have pinged me asking my thoughts about how much the iPhone will change the mobile web landscape, seeing how I'm in the midst of authoring a book on the subject.

My reply? Hardly at all. Here's my reasoning:

Content zooming isn't new. Don't get me wrong — the UI features in "Safari Mini" (or whatever the new name) are no doubt really cool, but the technology to see an entire web page and zoom in/out — "adaptive zooming", "mini-map navigation", what have you — has existed, to my knowledge, for some time now (at least a year?). Additionally, Opera has been developing similar technology for non-desktop browsers, notably of late in the version for Nintendo Wii (video). I really like the idea of viewing the exact same site on a mobile, but I question how practical it is for every site. (Nor is the idea of mobile widgets new, while we're at it.)

Data costs will continue to plague subscribers. Take the NYTimes.com example shown in the keynote. We can probably expect "Safari Mini" to compress images and code to reduce download size much like other mobile user agents, but at the current NYTimes document size of +500 KB you could potentially pay $5.00 just to download the home page once, if paying per KB for data access. I'm currently subscribed to data plans on two different providers (Sprint, Cingular). One has unlimited, the other a 5 MB/mo cap. I surf endlessly on the unlimited plan, but I'm very cautious about web content on the other. Granted, iPhone owners will likely be unlimited plan subscribers, but still. (For the record, let it be said I expect unlimited data plan growth/affordability to continue to increase the next few years.)

Context is still king. At the end of the day, the iPhone is a device built for mobility. And with mobility, there are limitations and opportunities that should be addressed, both of which are roughly the same for iPhone as that of nearly any mobile device. Consider the Google Maps app, for example. Firstly, Google Maps Mobile has been widely available on a variety of devices for some time now. Secondly, if iPhone isn't GPS-enabled, that is to say it can tell where I'm at rather than typing in my location, it doesn't radically alter the existing experience anyway. The UI is slick for sure, but beyond that I'm still at the mercy of text entry.

iPhone owners won't be the typical mobile web user. If the mobile web is to become anything more than rich internet access for elite phone subscribers, we must look beyond Blackberrys, Treos and yes, iPhone. Currently India is outpacing all other countries in mobile subscriptions growth (source), but don't expect them to be iPhone owners anytime soon — or owners of devices with similar capabilities, speaking in terms of a subscriber majority.

All this aside, while the iPhone won't revolutionize the mobile industry as a whole anytime soon, it will revolutionize the individual mobile web experience, and come June that's about all that will matter for me.

Via: Cameronmoll

Mobile Video Sharing Startup MyWaves Gets $6 Million First Round Funding

MyWaves, a Sunnyvale start-up that lets you shoot video with your mobile and e-mail it to an online account where others can see it, has raised $6 million in first round funding, from Menlo Ventures.
Gigaom: MyWaves delivers web-based video clips to cell phones. The site is designed so users can create and subscribe to other’s “video channels,” which are a series of back-to-back video clips. To make money, the company says it is doing licensing deals with carriers and offering sponsorship and branding deals for companies looking to reach mobile communities.

Orb Bringing YouTube And Other Videos Sites To Mobiles

What YouTube is still thinking about, other startups have done before it can: bringing the user-gen videos on mobiles. I bet there are other applications out there that can enable it as well.
Orb Networks, a TV place shifting software (competing with the likes of Slingbox) plans to offer videos from YouTube or any other video sharing site on mobile phones with a new software launch this week, reports Reuters.
The new software version lets them view, search and create media channels from the Internet and direct it onto cell phones and laptops from these sites. Here’s how it works: Users who come across a video on Web sites such as YouTube can click on a button dubbed “Orb This” installed on their Web browser. That choice will transfer the link to the Orb Web menu and make it available for viewing on phones.
However, Orb’s new programs can also only be used on advanced smartphones like Motorola’s Q model or Nokia’s N80 phone, and won’t work for a wider audience of users with less sophisticated phones.
According to reports, YouTube is holding talks with Verizon to make its videos available on cell phones and TV.

Technorati Tags: Mobile, YouTube

Myths of mobile Web2.0 (and mobile Ajax)

One of the next buzzword these days is “Mobile Ajax“, as THE technology that will save mobile applications. This was especially true with the recent announce of “SoonR”, the first mobile enabled Ajax application. Looks good, but unfortunately, I have no Ajax enabled browser out of the thousands of handsets we have here at MobileScope….

But this generates some buzz, and as usual, some hype. So, in a “back to reality” attempt, I’ve tried to discuss a few myth of “mobile Ajax” here:

• Mobile 2.0=Mobile Web2.0 (and Mobile Web2.0 = Ajax on mobile). Wrong, as this imply a choice of technologies. The good thing (or is it a bad thing?) with mobile, is that there is a huge choice of technologies. If mobile is connected, does not mean that it is connected only through browser.
• Ajax is the only technology to create mobile mashups: (this is the same wrong statement than in the web): No, basically ALL technologies can be used to create mashup, to access to existing Web services:
• J2ME (and not need to use “JSR172″ to do this)
• FlashLite can do it to
• Native OS of course….
• Even Wap/Html/Xhtml can be used to create mashups…
• A few example of personal mobile mashups (done in “plain J2ME”)
• Google Map+WikiMapia on mobile
• or Flickr Maps on mobile
• Ajax applications will run the same on mobiles than on PC, and this will save us some porting costs. Wrong! Seems that the Write Once Run Anywhere myth is back!! It was actually already not achievable through technology designed for this, so I did not see how Ajax app (which is basically designed for one or two platform) will be able to address suddenly thousands of different platforms….. And all the existing so called mobile Ajax applications are ALREADY specific for mobile. The SoonR mobile version is not the same one than SoonR on PC….
• Ajax applications are a way to by pass operators….There is
  absolutely NO link between operators and this. Java, Flash, Symbian
  applications can be acceded directly by end user as well as Ajax
  applications (and with a bigger installed base). In fact, there is a
  link: as an Ajax is an online application, it’s easiest for them to
  block certain site if they want too….And no way to install it outside
  the browser! The biggest issue is not the access, is the billing…Or
  the business model. How to make end user pay for services in an easy
  way….

I like Ajax as one of the technology that I could use to create a better experience, but as discussed in one of my previous post, I think that the complexity needed both in the browser and the application is unnecessary on mobile device, and we should take the mobile opportunity to solve some of the technical issue raised by Ajax on the web. There is also an interesting article from Dioan Hincliffe raising a few of the Ajax issues: Seven things that every software project needs to know about ajax.
A few of his remarks:

• Ajax applications are complex applications (even if they are doing simple things). This leads to this comment: “Good Ajax programmers are hard to find”
• The browser model (of Ajax) haves some limitation: no way to access to some local resources of the handset…
• The browser was never made for Ajax. In other way, ajax developer used the installed base of modern browser to create something unique.

Now, back to mobile….Should we try to duplicate current ajax complexity to mobile, with one model, or can we try to solve some of the issues of Ajax?

I am a strong believer of the last option. There are already three technologies that will play significant role in the future: J2me, FlashLite, and Ajax. Only one is really deployed now and it’s J2me. FlashLite is on the way and Ajax far from being a reality yet. But these three are complementary, and could work together in a perfect way, in a different and better model than on the web.

 

Via : TomSoft

 

Skype s'explique sur le retard de sa version mobile

Le logiciel de Skype dédié au mobile était prévu pour 2005, mais malgré la fin de l'année 2006 qui approche à grands pas, aucune annonce ne paraît être en préparation. Alors que se passe-t-il ? D'après Zenntrom le fondateur, cité par Reuters, de nombreux obstacles techniques et d'incompatibilité avec Symbian auraient empêchés la sortie de l'offre compatible avec les mobiles Nokia. En revanche, certains téléphones, fonctionnant avec Windows Mobile de Microsoft avaient pu être équipés du logiciel de téléphonie, et ont été vendus en petit nombre en Europe, car ce système d'exploitation n'est pas disponible sur l'ensemble du parc de téléphones.