Mobile Software Development

Mobile Ajax

2007-06-10T22:28:00.000-07:00

Ajax has gained significant following as a way to create Rich Internet Applications (RIA). For discussion of various RIA technologies you can refer to my paper Rich Internet Applications Pick Up Where HTML Stops.

Mobile Ajax FAQ by Ajit Jaokar, Rocco Georgi and Bryan Rieger provides wealth of information on how Ajax applies to creation of mobile applications. The topics include (among others):

Is there a Mobile Ajax checklist/minimum requirements?
Why should one do Ajax on mobile phones / what problem does it solve?
What are the options to Mobile Ajax?
What existing Mobile Ajax frameworks, toolkits and libraries should I use?
Which browsers support Mobile Ajax?
What are the (current) hurdles in implementing and running Mobile Ajax applications?

FAQ gets into a good level of details and is a good read.

Reading mobile blogs with Yahoo Pipes

2007-05-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

There is no shortage of information sources for voracious readers. Domain of mobile software development is no exception. Quality and relevancy do vary of course. When it comes to the mainstream media I find Information Week and its Mobility Tech Center the most informative. Outside of traditional publications FierceMarkets and its sites – FierceWireless, FierceMobileContent and in particular Fierce Developer – offer the most relevant content.

You can subscribe to variety of sources with your favorite blog reader. Now Yahoo Pipes offers even easier access to information you want to access on regular basis. Pipes allows you to remix data feeds and create information mashups. You can combine information from multiple sources and create a single feed of information you are interested in.

As a quick experiment I created a feed combining the most recent items from this blog, FierceDeveloper and Information Week mobile blog. You can find result at http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=Ek3bP5_l2xGOG7FKnkartA.

Mobile user experience by Google

2007-04-22T18:36:00.000-07:00

Stephen Wellman from Information Week summarized talk by Google user experience designer Leland Rechis recently. You can find the write up at the InformationWeek's Mobile Weblog.

Here is the excerpt:

"Wellman breaks down mobile users into three behavior groups:
A. Repetitive now
B. Bored now
C. Urgent now

The repetitive now user is someone checking for the same piece of information over and over again, like checking the same stock quotes or weather. Google uses cookies to help cater to mobile users who check and recheck the same data points.

The bored now are users who have time on their hands. People on trains or waiting in airports or sitting in cafes. Mobile users in this behavior group look a lot more like casual Web surfers, but mobile phones don't offer the robust user input of a desktop, so the applications have to be tailored.

The urgent now is a request to find something specific fast, like the location of a bakery or directions to the airport. Since a lot of these questions are location-aware, Google tries to build location into the mobile versions of these queries."

The model looks good. The only change I would make is renaming "bored now" with "available now". "Bored now" suggests need to be entertained. "Available now" is much broader. It encompasses entertainment but also covers “I have a spare moment, I better use it productively” mindset.

The three behavioral models suggest three different categories of applications supporting specific user needs.

Mobile Voice Recognition

2007-04-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

Mobile devices have some annoying limitations. In particular, data input using tiny keyboards is cumbersome. Output capabilities and screen size are less of a problem. If you could only talk to the device and get results displayed on the screen you could make phones much more user friendly.

The topic of my master thesis was speech recognition using neural networks. It was a while ago - I will not mention the exact number of years :-). Technology has made a lot of improvements since then. Many companies have deployed speech recognition in call centers to replace traditional IVR systems and improve customer experience. Desktop products such as Dragon Naturally Speaking have been available for a number of years. Underlying standards such as VoiceXML have matured.

Speech recognition is also making progress in the mobile space. Nuance, the leading provider of speech solutions, is promoting its Mobile Speech Platform. Applications include mobile search and mobile messaging. Search responds to voice commands such as

“Find restaurant near Union Square, San Francisco”
“Weather in the Bay Area”
“Call Bob Tekiela”

Messaging combines dictation software with Text To Speech (TTS) engine enabling users to speak and/or listen to emails, IM or text messages.

Other companies working on mobile speech recognition include:
Promptu
V-Enable
VoiceBox Technologies
VoiceSignal

Mobile Ruby

2007-03-11T23:16:00.000-07:00

Ruby is rapidly gaining popularity in the crowded world of programming languages. Ruby on Rails web application framework in particular is getting recognized for its elegance, simplicity and shortened application development time. Computerworld has just listed it among “The Top Five Technologies You Need to Know About in '07”. Revolution Health, startup founded by Steve Case, is the most prominent recent example of a site built using it.

Ruby for Symbian OS is I believe the first attempt to make Ruby available to the developers of mobile applications. The languages has been ported to the OS and Symbian has started work on extending it with a set of mobile libraries.

Rollable Displays

2007-03-04T21:16:00.000-08:00

I did not have the chance to participate in the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona last month. I did however check the mobile awards bestowed at the conference. There are quite a few prizes to receive in categories such as best game, best music service, best video service, best enterprise service, best handset etc. What stood out for me was the innovation award received by Polymer Vision, a spin out from Phillips.

Mobile devices, at least to the users accustomed to PCs with broadband connectivity, have a number of limitations:

limited screen real estate
cumbersome user input
constrained network bandwidth

Polymer Vision, with its rollable display, is addressing the first of these. The idea is to make a big screen available in a small device. The screen stays hidden in the device when not used. The user rolls it out when accessing the device. Rollable screens, rollable keyboards, high bandwidth, speech recognition are all on the wish list to make mobile devices easier to use. Polymer Vision is certainly helping to turn this vision into reality.

Do not rush to the store to buy a phone with a rollable screen yet. The company is planning to start manufacturing commercial quantities of the first generation, 5 inch displays this year. Telecom Italia is planning to market Cellular Book, the very first device using it.

iPhone Closed To Developers

2007-02-04T14:41:00.000-08:00

The iPhone launch, as pretty much everything coming from Apple, created a lot of excitement. I am not going to go over the benefits, feature set etc. You can find it on the Apple site Apple site. Wikipedia also provides a good overview.

What is interesting to developers is that Apple called iPhone a “closed platform” which indicates that there will not be a public API. However interested parties can call Apple developer relations for more information. iPhone runs a stripped down version of OS X and it is certainly capable of running 3rd party applications. “Inside the iPhone: Third Party Software” offers a good discussion on the topic.

It appears that the iPhone will support 3rd party applications but only from partners approved by Apple. It certainly makes it more difficult for developers.

Flash Lite

2006-12-30T17:12:00.000-08:00

Flash is broadly known for its animation capabilities. Flash plug-in is by far the most popular plug-in for the Internet browsers and it is installed on well over 90% of all desktops. It is the leading platform for building Rich Internet Applications (RIA). For the discussion of RIA technologies, you can refer to my article “Rich Internet Applications Pick Up Where HTML Stops” published by Computerworld.

Flash Lite intends to replicate the success of its older sibling on mobile devices. It offers rich multimedia capabilities (images, audio, video), which makes it a particularly appealing platform for entertainment applications. To develop Flash Lite applications you need Macromedia Flash Professional 8 with the Flash Lite 2 update. The software supports rich content authoring, programming in ActionScript, and testing using mobile emulator. It is distributed with a number of mobile templates and over 90 specific handset profiles. For an interesting introduction to Flash programming (and comparison of Flash Lite to Mobile Java at the same time) you can refer to Eddie McGreal’s article “So You're Thinking About Using Flash Instead of J2ME?”
Flash Lite applications run on top of Flash Lite player, which in turn runs on top of a mobile operating system. The players are available for Symbian, BREW and Windows Mobile.

Flash Lite is promising. However these are still early days. Verizon is the first USA carrier which embraced it. FlashLite is supported on six BREW enabled handsets distributed by Verizon.

What technology platform to choose for development of mobile applications?

2006-12-03T19:23:00.000-08:00

A wide variety of platform choices is typical of an emerging market. The mobile platform market is promising and as a result of this lots of ideas are brought to the market. This creates a challenge to application developers who need to make bets on which platforms to align themselves with. Here are my recommendations for the USA market:

1. If reaching the widest possible audience is the primary driver then SMS is a clear choice. It is supported by all carriers and available on the largest set of handsets. In addition, deploying SMS applications is straightforward as it does not require going through an extensive approval process by the carriers. Anybody who has used texting is familiar with how to interact with messages. Hence adoption is uncomplicated as well. The big disadvantage is limiting user interface. While exchanging text messages can meet many user needs, there are many applications which require a more sophisticated user interface. Still companies such as Google, Yahoo, PayPal, and many others have demonstrated that a variety of applications can be built using SMS.

2. Mobile web is the second in terms of availability on large number of handsets. It is easy to built and deploy mobile web applications. However user experience is rather cumbersome. Applications involve lots of clicking with lengthy delays between page refreshes. Therefore I am personally not very fond of the platform in its current state.

3. When functionality of a fully fledged application is required and the application is targeting users with a variety of devices across all key carriers, there is no choice but to build it twice – in J2ME and BREW. A prudent approach may be to build the application on top of one of the two platforms, validate it in the marketplace and then port to the other platform. Which platform to choose first? It is easier to set up a J2ME development environment and the learning curve is shorter as well. BREW has a smaller footprint and subsequently can run on a broader selection of devices. Its build in revenue sharing model has a strong appeal as well. Out of the two, for experimentation J2ME is a better first choice. It is important to note that J2ME and BREW applications will need to be certified before a carrier would allow deployment on its network.

4. Native Symbian, Linux, and Windows Mobile applications running on smartphones offer the highest level of sophistication. They are a good choice for developers targeting specific devices who work closely with device manufacturers or carriers. However, for many programs, the complexity of development and a small market share of devices supporting these operating systems outweigh the benefits.

5. For enterprise applications where the user base is known and both carrier and device selection can be controlled, PDA is typically the best choice. Larger form factor and better input capabilities support more sophisticated applications. Out of the three PDA operating systems Mobile Windows is the safest longer term choice as it offers the highest probability of being around years from now. Many users have a strong affinity with Blackberry which is also a good choice. PalmOS market share has been declining. It is possible however, that PalmSource will regain its momentum through the implementation of its Linux strategy.

For overview of the mobile development platforms please refer to the earlier posts:
Mobile Messaging
Mobile Web
Mobile Java
BREW
Symbian
Mobile Linux
Microsoft Windows Mobile Platform
PDA Operating Systems

Which mobile development platforms are supported by the USA carriers?

2006-11-24T06:54:00.000-08:00

Carriers tightly control mobile devices, wireless network, and applications which get deployed to those devices. This is one of the big differences faced by developers who may be more used to building Internet applications in an unrestricted, open environment. In addition different carriers support different standards thus further complicating the landscape.

The USA market is dominated by three carriers, who jointly own 70% of mobile subscribers as depicted by the diagram below. Consequently we will focus on these three carriers.

All three carriers support SMS and mobile web. All three offer a number of smartphones and PDAs. The biggest difference is in Java and BREW support. Verizon embraced BREW while Cingular and Sprint are in the J2ME camp. Subsequently – beyond SMS and mobile web – there is no single platform targeting the wide variety of devices supported by all carriers.

More information for developers can be found on the carrier websites:

For overview of the mobile development platforms please refer to the earlier posts:

Mobile Messaging
Mobile Web
Mobile Java
BREW
Symbian
Mobile Linux
Microsoft Windows Mobile Platform
PDA Operating Systems

PDA Market Update

2006-11-12T12:44:00.000-08:00

Information Week - in its October 30, 2006 issue - published good overview of the current state of the PDA market.

The highlights are:

In the first half of 2006 38.5 million smartphones were shipped worldwide (75% more than in the the first half of 2005)
IDC predicts 8 million samrtphones will ship in the USA in 2006 (up 54% from 2005)
RIM continues to dominate USA market (53% of the market in 2005) but it has only 6% of the global market
Nokia has 67% of the world market but had only 5% of the USA market in 2005
The biggest threat to RIM is the Windows Mobile operating system now on phones from Cingular, HP, Motorola, Palm, Sprint and others
Motorola made successfull entry into market - the company sold more than 150,000 Moto Q phones in the first 30 days after its release

You can find full article writen by Elena Malykhina here. You can also find comparison chart of smartphones on the Information Week site.

PDA Operating Systems

2006-10-21T20:24:00.000-07:00

OS vendor	2004 Shipments	% Share	2005 Shipments	% Share	Growth 04/05
PalmSource	1,210,090	5.2%	2,199,360	4.7%	81.75%
Microsoft	1,119,610	4.8%	1,426,770	3.0%	27.4%
RIM	135,180	.6%	684,410	1.5%	406%

Microsoft Windows Mobile Platform

2006-10-15T07:10:00.000-07:00

Mobile Linux

2006-10-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

Symbian

2006-09-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

This post is a continuation of the series exploring mobile technology platforms. For introduction to the series please refer to: "What technology platform to choose for development of mobile applications?"

Other postings in the series:
Mobile Messaging
Mobile Web
Mobile Java
BREW

Symbian

Symbian OS (http://www.symbian.com/) is a fully fledged operating system designed specifically for advanced phones also known as smartphones. It is developed by Symbian, a company owned by a number of phone manufacturers led by Nokia which owns close to 50% of the company. According to Symbian, almost 60 million phones have been shipped with its OS by the end of 2005. Symbian dominates the market for smartphones – reports from analysts such as Gartner and IDC estimate that its market share is at 68% to 85%. A list of phones running Symbian OS can be found at http://www.symbian.com/phones/index.html.

To develop Symbian applications you need Symbian OS SDK, Active Perl (to compile applications), Microsoft Debugging Tool for Windows and Visual C++ Toolkit, and Borland C++ BuilderX Mobile Edition or alternative C++ IDE such as Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 or Metrowerk CodeWarrior. Several different versions of Symbian OS SDKs are available. For example Nokia provides two versions: S60 and Series 80 Platform. The differences between versions include differences in UI API. Applications are developed for a specific version of the SDK and need to be ported to other versions to support a broader set of Symbian devices. Native Symbian applications are written primarily in C++. However, the OS also supports J2ME, XHTML browsing, Python, FlashLite, Visual C++ and Visual Basic.

BREW

2006-09-04T22:16:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth posting in the series exploring mobile technology platforms. For introduction to the series please refer to: "What technology platform to choose for development of mobile applications?"

Other postings in the series:
Mobile Messaging
Mobile Web
Mobile Java

BREW

The Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) is a mobile runtime environment developed by Qualcomm. BREW separates applications from mobile phone hardware by providing a set of APIs. BREW applications, or applets, support rich functionality, graphics, sound and run on all BREW-enabled phones. Native BREW programs are developed in C or C++ using SDK provided by Qualcomm. In addition to SDK, to develop applications you also need the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler (to compile applications for simulation using phone emulator supplied with the SDK), and RealView or GNU cross-compiler for ARM (to compile applications for the phone CPU). Applications have to be signed with VeriSign Authentic Document ID.

In addition to C and C++, BREW supports Java and Macromedia FlashLite through so called BREW extensions. However, BREW without extensions has a significantly smaller footprint and thus Java applications have more demanding hardware requirements than C or C++.

Qualcomm not only provides a mobile runtime environment but also the BREW Delivery System (BDS), application distribution and billing platform. BDS in essence is a virtual marketplace connecting application developers and carriers, and a platform for delivering application to end users.

Mobile Java

2006-08-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

This is the third posting in the series exploring mobile technology platforms. For introduction to the series please refer to: "What technology platform to choose for development of mobile applications?"

Other postings in the series:
Mobile Messaging
Mobile Web

Mobile Java

Java 2 Platform Micro Edition (J2ME) is a subset of the Java Platform that is designed specifically for smaller devices. The Java platform encompasses Java programming language, Java Virtual Machine (JVM) which runs on top of an operating system and executes Java code, and a set of standard class libraries or application programming interfaces (APIs). J2ME, in comparison to Standard Edition (J2SE) and Enterprise Edition (J2EE), uses smaller JVM and supports smaller set of APIs.

J2ME is divided into configurations and profiles designed for different categories of devices. Configurations define exact set of supported APIs and detail JVM specification. Profiles extend configurations by adding more specific APIs to the configuration. Configuration applicable to mobile devices is called Connected Limited Device Configuration (CLDC). It was designed for smaller devices with intermittent network connectivity. Another example of configuration is Connected Device Configuration (CDC) which has been designed for Internet Appliances. Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) is a profile based on CLDC. Mobile Java applications are developed for the specific profile. MIDP programs, also known as MIDlets, would run on any device supporting MIDP.

There are two variants of MIDP – MIDP 1.0 which runs on top of CLDC 1.0 and newer MIDP 2.0 which runs on top of CLDC 1.1. Both MIDP 2.0 and MIDP 1.0 devices are currently on the market.

A variety of tools support J2ME application development. Sun offers the Sun Java Wireless Development Toolkit (http://java.sun.com/products/sjwtoolkit/) and NetBeans Mobility Pack (http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/mobility/ ). The toolkit provides a complete but rudimentary set of development tools. NetBeans is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Other IDEs that support mobile development include JBuilder/Mobile Studio form Borland, WebSphere Studio Device Developer from IBM, and EclipseME. Phone manufacturers provide Software Development Kits (SDKs) that are tailored to their particular devices.

Mobile Web

2006-08-13T22:07:00.000-07:00

This is the second posting in the series exploring mobile technology platforms. For introduction to the series please refer to: "What technology platform to choose for development of mobile applications?"

Other postings in the series:
Mobile Messaging

Mobile Web

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an open standard defining how mobile devices can interact with the Internet. There are two variants of the protocol – WAP 1.x and newer WAP 2.0. WAP 2.0 embraces Internet standards such as TCP, HTTP and XHTML.

WAP enables “Internet like” browsing user experience. It supports textual and graphical content, color, links, forms, menus and buttons. Phones supporting WAP come with pre-installed WAP browser such as the Openwave Mobile Browser.
Applications are developed in a markup language similar to HTML. Three markup languages are available: Wireless Markup Language (WML), Compact HTML (cHTML) and Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML). WML is the only choice for devices running WAP 1.x browser. WAP 2.0 browsers support both XHTML and WML. XHTML is a refinement of the HTML standard, incorporating the stronger XML set of rules which results in a cleaner and better structured content. XHTML is recommended for use with WAP 2.0 clients. XHTML documents work in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which provide separation of presentation from content and simplify support for a variety of mobile devices.

Unfortunately the universe of standards is not that simple. There are competing mobile extensions of XHTML such as WML 2.0 and XHTML Mobile Platform (XHTML MP), as well as competing mobile subsets of CSS such as Wireless CSS (WCSS) and CSS Mobile Profile. XHTML without extensions is also referred to as XHTML Basic. Extensions have been designed to address specific constraints of mobile devices such as small screen size and resolution. Different extensions however are supported by different manufacturers.

WAP applications are deployed on web servers similarly to regular web sites. To access an application user opens mobile browser and types in a URL. Carriers typically deploy mobile portals with a pre-selected set of WAP applications accessible through the carrier defined menu structure. Mobile users can bookmark mobile web sites as well as configure portal menus to simplify access to their favorite sites.

To develop mobile sites you need an authoring tool and a phone emulator. An authoring tool may be as simple as a text editor. Many HTML authoring tools support XHTML nowadays. A phone emulator, such as the Openwave Emulator, simplify testing of the sites across many devices.

Mobile Messaging

2006-08-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

This is the first posting in the series exploring mobile technology platforms. For introduction to the series please refer to: "What technology platform to choose for development of mobile applications?"

Messaging

Short Message Service (SMS) allows wireless phones to send and receive short text messages. All carriers and nearly all phones support the sending and receiving of messages. SMS supports e-mail addressing, so the device can send e-mails directly to an e-mail address. For example, to send a text message to the Cingular phone number (415) 123-4567 you simply send an e-mail to 4151234567@mmode.com. For Verizon the e-mail address would be 4151234567@vtext.com.
Messages have a 160-character limit which includes the sender's e-mail address (if applicable), the message and, if provided, the subject and callback number.

SMS application may use Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), a protocol used in sending and receiving e-mails over the Internet. Such an application structurally is not different from a non-mobile application that sends or receives e-mails. Another option is connecting directly to the carrier’s SMS access gateway through SMPP (Short Message Peer to Peer) protocol. SMPP is more complex to implement but it offers some advantages such as shorter latency and the ability to confirm delivery.

Multimedia Message Service (MMS) is an extension of the SMS concept. It is a store-and-forward method of transmitting text, graphics, sound files and video clips. Carriers deploy servers, called MMS Centers, to implement the offerings on their networks. MMS also supports e-mail addressing, so the device can send mesage directly to an e-mail address. Verizon’s address for the phone number (415) 1234567 would be 4151234567@vzwpix.com. MMS, however, is not the same as e-mail. E-mails support attachments, MMS does not. Instead, presentation of the message is coded into the message itself so that the images, sounds, and text are displayed in a predetermined order.
MMS messages support up to 1000 characters of text. Multimedia file size limit is 100kb at Cingular and 200kb at Verizon.

What technology platform to choose for development of mobile applications?

2006-07-30T13:48:00.000-07:00

Recently I decided to experiment with mobile applications. It has been a few years since I built my latest wireless program. Mobile technologies have moved on since then. Therefore the first step in the process is to evaluate the state of the market, identify available platforms and decide on the most suitable set of technologies.

I thought I would share my findings in a blog. The postings will be useful to those embarking upon building their first wireless application. My investigation focuses on the USA landscape hence it will be helpful primarily to developers targeting this market.

In the future postings I will share outcome of the evaluation.