The Life of Bryan

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Software Pricing Models

2008-01-20T18:09:00.003Z

As of late I seem to have developed a slight obsession with Kart Rider - a cute and insanely fun little racing game (similar to Mario Kart) with a really interesting business model. Unlike many commercial games it's a free download, with no monthly subscription fee required to play - this greatly reduces the barriers to entry for potential customers and ultimately gets more people playing the game. Instead the company makes money by selling digital merchandise and upgrades which enables players to personalize their in-game avatars and trick out their karts. So, how much can you make selling digital goods (and related services)? Apparently, quite a bit!

Now, there's a mobile aspect to Kart Rider that I find absolutely fascinating. How do you sell digital goods to young people (who don't have credit cards) without having them constantly harass their parents? How about using micropayments via mobile phone.

One of hidden supports for the Nexon�??s (the company behind Kart Rider) great success is easy and convenient payment systems/methods which are backed by financial intermediaries. Especially, payment by cell-phone is the key factor. For example, a child who wants to buy Luzzi (in-game currency) would normally tease her/his parents to pay her/his money. What if the price is as high as usual MMORPG? What if another bothersome procedures need to be done? Just enter your cell phone number, and say identification code to your lovely daughter or son. What is better, there is much less resistance or hesitation to pay than paying by cash or credit card.

One other interesting tidbit to note is that this model (free software + paid upgrades/services) is starting to to garner interest outside of the gaming industry. Reminds me quite a bit of the business model adopted by razor manufacturers - give away the razor once, sell the blades for years to come.

Kocca Mobile Content Forum

2007-10-28T16:44:00.001Z

Tomorrow I'm off to London to attend the Kocca Mobile Content Industry Forum which going by the agenda should serve as a real eye-opener as to what the OEMs, carriers and publishers are thinking in regards to social networks, music, gaming and content in general on mobile devices - not only here in Europe, but also in comparison with the Asian (and specifically Korean) markets.

If you're not familiar with Kocca, they are basically a government agency set-up to assist Korean cultural and content companies with exporting their products to foreign markets. I first ran across them a few years back when I was unexpectedly introduced to Mashimaro and Pucca while living in Thailand.

I'm a little disappointed however to not see Tommi Ahonen on the list of speakers given his experience in the Korean mobile market. Ah well, I guess it gives me yet another reason to add his book to my wishlist.

Flash on the Beach

2007-10-28T12:09:00.001Z

I woke up to an absolutely delightful message in my in-box this morning. Apparently, the team at Future Platforms have managed to get their hands on a ticket for me to attend the sold out Flash on the Beach conference coming up in just over one weeks time.

I have to admit that I'm really excited to be taking part this year as the schedule looks fantastic, with the likes of Brendan Dawes, Mario Klingemann and Andries Odendaal (among many notable others) set to present some really inspiring and provocative sessions. Of course, I'll be at all of the mobile specific sessions and look forward to putting names to faces with many of the Flash Lite developers I've met virtually over the past few years.

Mobile Camp London

2007-09-30T17:30:00.000+01:00

Although exhausted from our recent move, Steph and I did manage to make it to Mobile Camp London yesterday to catch a couple of fantastic talks.

First off, Petro Soininen from Nokia gave a great presentation on Nokia's Web Runtime which utilizes the browser as a development platform in a manner that seems oddly similar to Adobe's AIR. There's even a couple of new DOM objects for dealing with mobile specific requirements such as UI navigation, display orientation and even system information available via an embedded plug-in. From a consumer point-of-view these widgets will seem just like any other application; can be installed (and un-installed) easily, launched from a menu icon (88x88 px .png) and are displayed full-screen. Apparently an emulator beta will be available in the next couple of weeks (mid-October 2007), and the runtime is expected to ship with all S60 3rd Edition FP2 devices onwards - and there is even talk of possibly back supporting some S60 3rd Edition FP1 devices.

The guys from TAT gave an interesting presentation about their products; Kastor and Cascades. I'm planning to write another related post on some of the ideas presented (along with a few from Magik Ink), but the general thinking and solutions in terms of data abstraction, visualizations, tools and workflow that TAT have come up with are really thought provoking.

The highlight for me (I was only able to attend on Saturday) was a very subtle presentation by Mal Minhas of Symsource about an experimental service they have created called Mo'txt. The session was entitled Text messaging 2.0 and was based around the concept of using the existing, ubiquitous and very familiar SMS interface as a web-services microbrowser. Services are listed as contacts on a user's phone (ie: Twitter, Flickr, etc along side Mum, Dad and the local taxi service) and a small piece of software (S60 current alpha) would manage proxying messages over IP (not HTTP) between the back-end server and the device - which results in almost instant responses, no charges for the SMS message (but data fees may apply) and a very small bandwidth footprint compared to doing a similar operation over http using a standard browser.

Lastly, I managed to catch the OpenMoko session, which as expected quickly turned into a Linux geek-fest with talk of Qt, x11, hardware, GPL, various C libs and even Gnash - but the thing I love about OpenMoko is how it seems to be getting more and more people truly excited about scratching their own mobile creative itches. Even talk of using Squeak on mobile devices made it into the discussion. :)

The one session I REALLY regret missing was Digital Kids and Disruption by Dr. Norman Lewis of Wireless Grids, which I'm hoping Steph will post about shortly. She told me all about it on the train ride home, but I'll be damned if I can remember any of the details.

Many thanks to Christian Lindholm of Fjord and all of the sponsors for making this event possible. Hopefully we can look forward to another one next year.

Future Platforms in Brighton

2007-09-30T15:31:00.001+01:00

I've been meaning to write about this for sometime, but Tom appears to have beaten me to it. As of tomorrow I'll be moving on from Yiibu in order to take up an absolutely amazing opportunity to head up design at Future Platforms. The team at FP have been doing some fantastic work to date, and it's a real privilege to be part of the team moving forward.

The last six weeks have been a bit hectic (to say the least) as Steph and I wrapped up the majority of our existing projects and moved our lives from Edinburgh to Brighton. Now that we're settled I'm hoping to have a little extra time to get back to blogging on a semi-regular basis - if I can pull myself away from all of the boutiques, cafes and culture that Brighton (and London) has to offer. :)

BTW, Steph is going to be continuing with Yiibu and appears to have a very busy month in front of her in London.

56 Nokia handsets with Flash Lite and counting

2007-08-11T16:30:00.001+01:00

Apparently as of August 8th there are now 56 Nokia handsets shipping with Adobe Flash Lite pre-installed. What's even more impressive is that they all aren't Series 60 devices as 23 of them are Series 40. Bill has compiled a list of all of these handsets along with their addressable screen size and supported content types into a convenient PDF for quick reference.

I'd love a similar document for Sony Ericsson handsets as I've typically had a much harder time finding actual, confirmed information on those devices - and thankfully Bill has indicated that he will tackle the Sony Ericsson space in the next update.

Overall I'm really impressed with the uptake of Flash Lite so far here in the UK. Many of these devices are readily available at Carphone Warehouse, T-Mobile and Phones4U - and I've seen a number of people fiddling with them on the street over the past year.

Of course there are still a lot of Motorola, Samsung and LG handsets out there without even a hint of Flash Lite on them - which only provides Nokia (and Sony Ericsson) yet another a very good reason to say "Boo Hoo For You!"

MOSH by Nokia

2007-08-10T10:47:00.000+01:00

MOSH is a content sharing site where community members upload, distribute and manage content to be viewed and enjoyed on mobile devices. With MOSH, anything from applications like mobile games, to videos, blogs, songs or photos are now accessible and distributable on your mobile device.

After spending a little time with the beta of MOSH by Nokia I have to admit that I both love and hate it equally so.

First off, in watching the community grow from 1,000 users to 5,000 in about 24 hours the biggest change I've seen is the volume amount of 'adult content' posted to the site with tags such as 'babes', 'hot', 'sexy' and even 'joanne' taking centre stage. I've got nothing against adult content - I was simply hoping that for once a 'user-generated-content' site wouldn't immediately turn into yet another blue channel.

Another thing I'm finding a little disturbing about MOSH is the potential copyright abuse with much of the content being posted. I'm seeing logos, brands - even other people's commercial products being posted for download. That said, this isn't a problem only faced by MOSH. YouTube, MySpace and countless others all have to find the right legal balance here.

I also wonder how the carriers are going to react to this initiative seeing as MOSH is potentially cutting out a huge chunk of their revenues (ie: content downloads and data fees) by further developing a sideloading culture.

I did mention that I also loved the site. As a content producer MOSH is really interesting as it allows me to publish content into a marketplace of sorts (currently all content is free) and track customer interest, downloads and even receive direct feedback. I can then use this information to design new or modify existing content offerings to deliver better content products to my audience.

Now I'm sure you can see the dilemma here. As a mobile content producer I have an existing community on the web to publish my mobile content to, and I have a some really useful tools with which to track audience interest in my content. I do not however have any economic incentive to actually create and publish my content through MOSH as currently everything is free. MyNuMo has been doing the commerce side of this (as well as mobile, user-generated content) for well over a year - why on earth was commerce not given priority in the feature set for MOSH?

A couple of additional notes:

ALWAYS add a screenshot of your application to drive traffic, we're typically visual creatures once the search engines deliver the goods
users should be allowed to select images to be used for collections, the current colour variations for the icons are LAME.
there is far too little space provided to showcase content making it very difficult to find anything
the device selection stuff is far too geeky in general - it needs to be simplified. Most people don't care or don't know - they just want it to work.
fix the incorrect item entries in 'Items in this Collection' widget. I keep getting completely different content displayed in the widget vs the actual collection.
MOSH team: if you're going to ask personal questions make them at least relevant!
some actual editorial from real human beings behind MOSH could make this site/application so much better

Eh, but what can you expect. It's a beta! ;-)
I guess my biggest question really is - who was MOSH really designed for?

If you're a member you can find me inside MOSH, and if you would like an invite please leave a comment with a valid email address

Mo!Relax Cafe - Cosy Creative Space

2007-08-08T15:36:00.000+01:00

Next time I'm in Taipei (outside of the airport transit lounge) I am definitely going to make a point of spending some time at Mo!Relax Cafe. There's more information available via PingMag.

Mo!Relax is an accomplished design studio and creative space, with a number of books, identity/branding work, and tons of print work to show for their multi-tasking. Dizzy and Shih-Chi run the business with a handful of part-time staff, juggling design work, translation and other projects along with slinging a mind-boggling array of bottled and draft beer along with super-yummy coffee drinks and desserts.

I have to admit that sounds SO much nicer than working at Starbucks. :)

Context and Distractions

2007-08-08T15:09:00.000+01:00

Interesting post over on Ludology about a new game called Musika by Masaya Matsuura and how first impressions and preconceived ideas can often cause one to completely overlook something potentially wonderful.

"When I judged the game, I solely focused on its gameplay. Big mistake. I failed to take into account how, where and when the game is used. More than a game, Musika is sort of a toy to play with while you are listening to music. Music is your #1 concern here, gameplay comes second (at least on the casual game mode). It's a game you play while doing something else. It's a more sophisticated way of drumming your fingers, humming or playing air guitar with your headphones on. Unlike traditional videogames, you don't need all your attention to play this game. And that's why it succeeds when traditional game criticism says that it should fail."

Reminds me a bit of Electroplankton by Toshio Iwai - which just happens to be one of my favorite distractions over the past few years. Perhaps not enough thumb action for many, but the interactions that take place between the ears are equally important in my opinion.

W3C/OpenAjax Alliance Workshop on Mobile Ajax

2007-08-07T12:15:00.000+01:00

Sadly no time to attend - but would have loved to participate otherwise. Hopefully Adobe will get involved as many of their tools (including Dreamweaver, Device Central and Flash) are already used by thousands (or millions?) of developers around the world. Also, if AIR is ever intended to run on mobile devices in the future wouldn't it make sense to get involved sooner rather than later. Remember, the web = xhtml/dom/css/js + flash/swf -- or WICD Mobile 1.0 depending who you ask. ;)

The goals of this workshop are to explore user and industry use cases and challenges around Ajax applications on mobile devices and to help shape ongoing work in making productive use of Ajax in mobile browsers. Thus, questions that might serve as appropriate discussion points for position papers include:
What user experiences can Ajax enable in mobile browsers that are different from a typical mobile browsing experience?
What tools for creating Ajax applications for mobile browsers do developers have available to work with today?
What are device manufacturers and browser vendors doing in the area of Ajax applications on mobile devices?
What differentiates Ajax development for mobile browsers from Ajax development for desktop browsers?
Is there a need for standardization related to Ajax applications on mobile devices? If so, in what areas? (For example, DOM extensions, Javascript interfaces, new protocols related to caching, etc.)
Is there a need for development of best practices for mobile Ajax?

Self-portrait

2007-08-06T11:51:00.000+01:00

Inspired by a Paul Klee quote I ran across over the weekend.

A line is a dot that went for a walk.
Paul Klee

Also happened to discover Analogue after wandering down yet another side-street in Edinburgh.

Mobile Maze - Learning in your hand

2007-08-03T10:08:00.000+01:00

While language learning software has been on available on computers for many years, we have only recently begun to see similar software starting to emerge for mobile devices. The University of Nottingham 's L-Mo project aims to make language learning fun and effective, by applying current practice in mobile games development to the teaching of vocabulary and grammar on handheld devices.

A similar project from King Mongkut's University of Thonburi in Bangkok, Thailand is Mobile Maze (MoM). This software turns a mobile phone into a useful learning tool by not only helping students to enjoy reading and learning English, but also by sharpening their thinking skills.

I think it's quite interesting that both of these projects are using play as a vehicle to learning.

On a side note I'm somewhat amazed at the level of detail found in the installation notes for MoM. They not only provide instructions on how to install their own software, but also a cracked version of Flash Lite 1.1 for Series 60 devices - which I imagine can easily be found at MBK.

While I don't condone piracy, I am absolutely stunned at the lengths some people will go to get the content they actually want onto their devices. I imagine that as the newer Nokia and Sony Ericsson models with Flash Lite pre-installed ship in South East Asia things will only get easier.