You can sign-up here: http://www.theapplicationreview.com/get-the-newsletter/

And if you’ve got any suggestions (on any platform), tell me about them.

If you’d like to hire the team that built and created Garmin Connect, the world’s largest repository of recorded GPS activities, then today is your lucky day.

Garmin decided to shut down operations at its San Francisco office just over a month ago — and thus move all Garmin Connect management and development back to Nowheresville, Some State. (Olathe, Kansas, if you wanted to know). Most of the Garmin Connect team aren’t bothering with the relocation.

So they’ve knocked up a site to showcase their talents, talk about Garmin Connect and how they built it.

If you’re in the market for a location-based team of geniuses, you can hire them as one team, ready to rock. Given how hot location is at the moment, I doubt the team will be waiting long.

Every success, team!

The site you need: http://thegcteam.com/

The nice chaps at Mobile Entertainment magazine ran my ‘Fear The Googlepipe‘ opinion-piece yesterday morning. Did you catch it?

It’s based on a post I did a little while ago about the launch of the arrival of the Nexus One and what that could mean for your common-or-garden mobile operator. I say ‘based’, but the guys at Mobile Entertainment — proper media — have sprinkled some editorial dust and turned the original wail into a half decent looking piece. Thank you ME!

Here’s the first bit…

Well that was a day to remember. The day Google got stuck into mobile merchandising and nailed the mobile operator to the wall.

That’s it: thank you for coming, mobile operators! You did your best. But now you’ve been ‘owned’.

That’s it: thank you for coming, mobile operators! You did your best. But now you’ve been ‘owned’.

Well, maybe not yet. But do look out for the big G. With the Nexus One, Google has ushered in an entirely new way of buying a consumer handset: from its website in six clicks. Shit! Is it that simple?

Continue at Mobile Entertainment –>

Thank you to the delicious people who retweeted it — including the Infomob chaps, Mitcan, SLAMobile, Peggy Anne, Martin Wilson, Radek and MEF.

I caught some news today about myFairPartner, a new online temporary employment service. They’ve integrated absolutely everything into one online portal which, if you’re a temporary worker (or, you hire a lot of them), will be an absolute dream come true.

It’s typically an absolute arse, hiring temporary workers. I’m sure many readers have, at one time or another, been a temp. There is so much wastage, it’s unbelievable. The lady from the agency phones you. You’re on the phone so she leaves a voicemail. You phone back 10 minutes later but that job’s gone. But she thinks she might have something for you. You wait 2 weeks. Then phone back. She’s tried calling you for 3 jobs but you didn’t respond… yeah, ridiculous. This kind of inefficiency is built right into the system.

But hopefully myFairPartner can fix that with their online approach that enables companies to begin the hiring process immediately. And crucially, because myFairPartner has integrated SMS (powered by the good people at TynTec) into the system, the information distribution and response circle should be that much tighter. Employers should, for example, begin to get replies from applications almost immediately — because SMS is something that people can respond to when they are working (even if it means a quick trip to the restroom).

I’ll be interested to see how things work with myFairPartner and TynTec. Good news.

That there is the next Nokia handset — the X9 — supporting 720p quad LED, microSD, HDMI, dual mini USB, AMOLED screen…

No wait…

Alas, it’s just a concept.

Yup, it’s made-up — but it’s a really-good made-up set of images. It’s been published by the chaps over at Greek technology site, Pestaola and I picked it up from MobileLivingRoom.de via Chanse.

As MobileLivingRoom points out, this handset is technically feasible.

I hope that Nokia are working on something like this. Something fit for the ‘i’ generation. Something that, when you put it next to a (rather old looking) iPhone 3GS, it doesn’t look like it was conceived in the Bronze Age.

Bring it on.

I’d have one of those X9s, definitely.

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INQ, the handset manufacturer owned by parent company Hutchison Whampoa was always going to have an easy time of it with the 3 group of companies. A couple of phone calls from the big man and woosh, INQ had clients coming out of its ears. And their handsets, targeted at the mass market, have been very positively received by end-users around the planet (not least because although the devices are certainly capable, they’re also priced in a very attractive manner).

The challenge has been unlocking the rest of the non-Hutchison marketplace. That challenge gets just a little bit easier today though, as INQ have signed a deal with Indian network, Aircel, to distribute both the INQ Mini and the INQ Chat. I think the devices — with their data laden capabilities and attractive price, will be a roaring success in India.

Just to give you an idea of the potential of this deal — the INQ devices will shortly be available in over 5,000 outlets. Plus, cricket legend M.S. Dhoni is fronting the introductory marketing campaign. Yup. That’s a recipe for success in India.

Congratulations INQ and congratulations Aircel. I look forward to posting the ‘we’ve sold a million already‘ news in short order.

(Here’s the INQ blog post announcing Airtel)

I’ve been playing with LoKast for a few days and it’s raised some rather exciting possibilities. The application turns your iPhone into a two-way media server, enabling you to rapidly share any of your media (photos, video, contacts, music) to anyone else using the app on the same WiFi or Bluetooth connection.

My first reaction was ‘well, there’s just me at home, so…’ — but that’s to miss the point with LoKast. For any young’n'hip things regularly hitting music venues or gigs, LoKast could be hugely valuable. Provided you’re both running the app (and that’s the main issue) you can swiftly discover random people in your vicinity and start browsing the media they’ve elected to make public.

It’s an absolute breeze to use. Fire it up, give yourself a name, choose a profile photo and start tapping media you’d like to share. It’s stupidly fast — of course — because you’re not using the internet, you’re using the local connection.

‘Local-casting’ will typically work when you’re within 300ft of other LoKast users — provided there’s WiFi (or if there’s not, Bluetooth is a useful fall back).

Think about using it at a sports stadium, for example. That could be a rather interesting experience. One imagines you might be able to find some fantastic photos, videos and audio related to your team. But LoKast could be phenomenally useful around the music scene for anyone who’d like to receive (or distribute!) all kinds of band or artist related media.

Flip up the app, browse the users and you’re immediately browsing their public content. Click the ‘add’ button on anything and it’s yours (apart from DRM protected music — DRM music offers you a 30-second clip and the option to buy the track on iTunes — fair enough).

I love it’s simplicity. It’s essentially just a nice skin on top of a web server — but the simplicity is what is beginning to swiftly engage users. I hear it’s getting a riotous reception at the mediafest that is SXSX. I can well imagine why. I’m particularly keen on how the app ushers in an era of disposable media — the transitory experience of sharing media, never to be repeated again. Forget becoming friends or ‘adding people’, this is all about the media.

I’m not entirely sure where LoKast could go. I certainly think that if some of the cool’n'hip iPhone users pick it up around the music/gigs/events space, it’ll break out quickly from SXSX.

I think music is the way ahead though. Indeed, I understand that artists such as The Boxer Rebellion, The Ruse, Bazaar Royale, BlackMahal and Katia have all signed up to use LoKast at their events this month. I can imagine a lot of users all flipping up LoKast on their iPhone at the instruction of the band they’re watching. Very interesting indeed.

Speaking of SXSX, Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures are reportedly planning on using LoKast to promote their new movies at one of the upcoming SXSX events. Again, that’s another area that makes a heck of a lot of sense.

I’ve made a quick video walk-through of LoKast so you can see some of the basic features in action:

You can, of course, find LoKast in the iTunes App Store (iTunes link — free). Enjoy…

It always gets exciting when The Blandford gets involved (that is, Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian). Responding to a query about successful Symbian downloads, Rafe pointed out that Quickoffice is on over 100 million Symbian phones. Including the 3 Symbian devices on my desk, here.

Rafe makes an interesting point for developers: Don’t forget the embed option.

There are a few developers I know right now who are currently doing embed deals with handset manufacturers (that is, getting their application pre-installed on the handsets). It’s not an easy process, but it can make you wildly, wildly successful.

For instance, one developer I know is going to go from maybe a few thousand downloads to 15 million installs, guaranteed, by this time next year. They’re integrating directly into the menu structure.

It’s not as simple as signing up to the iPhone dev programme and paying the $100 fee, but if you’ve got a particularly interesting, unique and relevant app, it’s definitely worth a chat with the manufacturers. You’ll also want some kind of revenue stream attached to it as you typically won’t have manufacturers paying you a lot (or indeed, any) money for an embed deal.

This said, don’t forget the embed option… !

It’s getting a little bit silly now, dear reader.

Ridiculously silly. We’ve had a good year now of mobile applications taking off, going ballistic. Now, though, it’s time for the industry to get real about the iPhone: It isn’t the only handset on the marketplace.

The World Is Not Flat

I understand that the iPhone is gorgeous, glorious, elegant, beautiful. Indeed, I have been first in the line to pan the painfully obvious failures of other manufacturers who had the temerity to vomit out handsets that couldn’t hope to match the ‘elegance’ of the jPhone (“Jesus Phone”).

I won’t go into specifics, suffice to say that for the last 3 years, any manufacturer stupid enough to show off their ‘iPhone killer’ looked, well, stupid. Very stupid.

And now that the plebians have got hold of them — i.e. you can get the jPhone free on contract in the United Kingdom — it seems there’s no stopping the iPhone juggernaut.

i-Limitations

As I discussed in my DevNest presentation last Wednesday, the iPhone has limitations. Here’s a good example: Anyone calling themselves a geek and actually using an iPhone as their primary handset is universally acknowledged to be wet. Highly wet. Aged-45-and-still-lives-with-his-parents wet. That’s because the iPhone is a glorified Fisher Price toy phone. It doesn’t do background applications. Like the proverbial thick-kid at the back of the class, the iPhone can only do one thing at a time. iPhone users are reduced to thinking and working in monotone.

[Sidenote: I do feel for the people showing off magnificently crafted applications that turn your iPhone into something awesome. I'm thinking of super-cool mobile messaging aggregators, VOIP clients or remote access clients, anything that's particularly nifty. How galling is it to know that when your users get a phone call, the whole sodding house of cards -- the simply fantastic system you've built -- falls to pieces because the device only does one thing at a time? And then the user has to fire up the application again... Simply rubbish, isn't it?]

Anyway, for the rest of the planet, the iPhone is a pretty nice experience. My mother loves hers. My wife — having dumped her Android G1 for the latest iPhone 3GS — is delighted. She is particularly enamoured with the nifty applications.

iPhone: 14% — still in the teens!

Gartner reckons that in terms of 2009 sales, worldwide, 14% of them were iPhones. 20% were BlackBerries and a whopping 47% were Symbian devices. 4% were Android (which, in case you were wondering, is why nobody is downloading your Android app). Just so we’ve got numbers in perspective, there were roughly 80 million smartphones sold in 2009. Looking at total handset sales — including rubbish devices — Nokia shipped 440 million phones last year. Samsung shipped 235 million, LG knocked back 122 million and both Sony and Motorola did about 50 million each.

Today, Nokia will ship about a million phones. Just to be clear: Over a million phones will leave their factories today.

And you’re busy developing on… iPhone.

Yes.

Great.

iPhone has served its purpose. It has demonstrated that mobile applications have relevance, that the market is worthy of attention. We have got past the stage of experimentation though. We know it works.

It is no longer good enough to only release an iPhone application. It’s fine to experiment with it. But if you’re a big brand and you only release on the iPhone, you’re stupid. Stupid, stupid and thrice stupid.

That’s because there’s a massive market sitting staring in the window wondering why they can’t do business with you.

The other platforms out there have been working really hard to make sure that the app experience on their handsets is beginning to resemble the elegance of iPhone. BlackBerry’s AppWorld is working nicely. Nokia’s Ovi Store is chugging back 1.5m downloads a day now. Samsung are working hard on their offerings, likewise Sony. Even the Android Marketplace is becoming useful.

Time To Think About Other Platforms

For a long time I’ve been complaining to Nokia. I’ve been going nuts over the fact that, a few months ago, I went out and bought a Nokia N86 on contract from UK operator, 3. The N86 is a piece of engineering genius and the camera is simply fantastic. I really do like it.

Here’s the example I’ve used — that really winds me up. A little while ago, Ocado (the grocery delivery service allied to the Waitrose chain of shops) launched an iPhone application. The app enables you to literally order your toilet rooms whilst you’re sat on the train. Genius. It’s basically an app interface to their existing online ordering portal.

My problem is this: How come the chump sitting opposite me on the train with his iPhone can order his toilet rolls with a few taps — and, with my Nokia N86, I can’t?

It’s because the people at Ocado decided not to create a Nokia/Symbian app. Instead, they decided just to focus on iPhone.

Initially I railed at Nokia for allowing this situation. And whilst the manufacturer did carry a substantial amount of responsibility for not creating the conditions to easily allow application creation and dissemination, the key issues are more or less fixed.

I don’t believe it’s Nokia’s problem any more. It’s companies like Ocado that are holding the marketplace back.

I’ll be more specific: It’s the digital agencies that are propping up the iFascist viewpoint.

I should point out that I haven’t phoned Ocado to find out if they did their development in-house or via an agency. I don’t want to because the Waitrose brand is held particularly high in my mind. I don’t want to destroy that by phoning them and finding out that they’re a bunch of numbskulls who haven’t even considered developing on other platforms. I actually did phone and got through to the voicemail of a chap called Ben.

But it doesn’t look good for Ocado. Oh no.

Silicon carries an fantastically illuminating interview with Jon Rudoe, head of retail at Ocado. Here is Jon discussing why they launched their iPhone app:

Silicon: What was your business case for launching an app?
Ocado: “The [problem] that people are trying to solve is: ‘How do I get my cupboard stocked and my fridge full with the products I want? How do I find, select and retrieve my weekly grocery needs?’ When you look at the world like that then you almost become platform agnostic. So, rather than sitting there thinking ‘well, I must have a website’, or ‘I must have a supermarket’, or ‘I must have whatever’, you actually find yourself thinking ‘I must have a mechanism for people to fulfil that want/need/job’… And then all you have to ask yourself is: ‘Do people want to do that on this platform?’.”

So we must assume that the Ocado chaps sat around the conference table and decided that anyone using a Nokia, a Samsung or a BlackBerry was unclean. Dirty. And of course, dirty people wouldn’t want to use Ocado on their device, right?

Here’s one more quote from the Silicon piece:

Silicon: How much research did you do before you launched the app?
John: “It was quite easy, at the stage we started developing, to look at the market and to look at where most of the phone usage was. We did some research and we can obviously spot which customers were visiting our regular website from which mobile devices and obviously we could understand general statistics about iPhones and other smartphone penetration. [An iPhone app was] a pretty obvious first place to start, basically.”

Goodness me.  This is why the mobile industry is screwed at the moment.

Numbskulls.

Ocado selected iPhone and for everybody else using a Nokia, a Samsung or a Sony Ericsson — or anything else — their message is (by default): If you want to order your toilet rolls on the train, sod off and buy an iPhone.

Unfortunately that isn’t a sustainable or sensible suggestion. It’s like suggesting customers trying to use Ocado Online from their Mac laptop should go and buy a PC first. Or vice versa.

Jon-from-Ocado goes on to point out that the iPhone now accounts for 2% of their online sales.

Let’s just stop there for a moment.

TWO PERCENT?

Their heads must button up the back.

TWO PERCENT of your sales go via mobile and you’ve limited that to ONLY iPhones?

What about Nokia?

What about Samsung?

What about BlackBerry?

It beggars belief, it really does.

The Cost Issue

Of course it’s expensive to develop on multiple platforms. Yes indeed. The kind of expense that small developers simply can’t cope with. And that’s entirely understandable. But if you’re an online retail giant — and TWO PERCENT of your sales are coming from iPhone already — what’s stopping you reaching out to other platforms?

Well it’s probably because it’s difficult.

That’s right. The one thing most digital agencies don’t tell their clients is that they don’t have a flucking clue how to develop for the other platforms.

Do ask your mobile agency about developing on Nokia. Or BlackBerry. Or Vodafone 360.  Watch their horrified look. Watch their faces screw up with mock disdain. It’s no longer possible to dismiss anything other than iPhone as ‘irrelevant’ or ‘not ready for prime time’.

This poses a real challenge for the Nike-wearing digital agency fraternity, who’ve had a really nice time knocking back the iPhone apps at pretty good rates.  Most of them have no experience with any other platforms. Most of them will — when your call comes in — be reaching for the phone number of that Eastern European mobile developer company, because the agency themselves — seriously — can’t tell a BlackBerry from a Samsung.

That’s going to become quite a business challenge for a lot of companies, soon.

It’s Not Just Ocado

Of course it’s not just Ocado guilty of this iFascism (“only focusing on the iPhone”) — the industry is rife with it. While everyone is busy competing with each other on the iPhone, there’s a land-grab beginning on the other platforms. It’s been ok to ignore these platforms whilst they’ve been busy struggling to establish themselves.

They’re established now.

And if you’re not developing for these other platforms, if you think they’re irrelevant — be very careful. They’re now coming of age and looking for their own superstars to rise up and dominate their charts. Heroes are being made on a daily basis across the other platforms. Even BlackBerry’s AppWorld has now started creating millionaires out of developers who were smart enough to get stuck in way before the hordes descend.

It’s time for me to calm down now.

Update: For the Americans, here’s the definition of ‘wet‘.

Due to the huge competitive pressure generated by the market entry of Nokia and the upcoming launch of Google navigation, Vodafone is proposing to close down Wayfinder. While awaiting the outcome of the negotiations with the unions and the decision, we will not be working on any development and will not deliver any new Location Services.

What happens now?

Essentially, Vodafone Internet Services / Location Services (aka Wayfinder) stops development projects with immediate effect. A transition team helps in winding down the services and where possible, to mitigate adverse business impacts for a period of time.

Support for Tailormade Maps continues and service continues to run for H1/M1 as well as for horizontal handsets. There will be no bugfixes made on any of the horizontal platforms.

We will wind down the services in an orderly manner. What this means in practice is that:
- we stop embedding any of the services (Navigation, Locate) on new handsets
- we stop producing new releases, porting to new handsets, making software maintenance releases
- we start withdrawing the applications from app stores and similar download channels (in a way as to not harm the business)
- all projects, including World Cup Locate project and 368 development are stopped with immediate effect

I think it’s good news that Vodafone have wielded the axe reasonably swiftly. Unless Wayfinder could offer something particularly compelling, it was going to be quite a challenge to compete with free. As Vodafone’s own Anna Cloke points out in this Engadget piece:

“We could not charge for something that others gave away for free.”

Agreed.

What next for Vodafone and navigation? Well, as this internal email points out, Tailormade Maps for the Vodafone 360 H1/M1 devices survives, although from what I’ve seen of them on the H1, I really don’t think too much of them.

I’m encouraged that Vodafone have noted that it’s going to be seriously difficult to compete with ‘free’ — instead of plodding on for another 18-month cycle. I also very much like the concept of the company sticking to the knitting rather than getting involved in supplying services that often don’t necessarily compete at the highest levels with the external competition.

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Here’s the video…

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I checked-in to the event then headed straight over to Mr Smith to say hello. He was arsing around with his laptop. Looking up, he briefly said hi, before advising, “Never, ever get an integrated SIM module on a Dell, this thing never seems to work.”

The holding area began to fill up. A chap by the name of Gary Gale came by and handed me the obligatory sticker sheet.

“You might remember me,” says Gary, “We had a frank exchange of views over BlackBerry AppWorld on Twitter a while ago?”

“Shit!” I think, “Errr,” I say to Gary, “I… errr, was I a little bit direct?”

I began to remember the episode and actually, I think Gary did have a good point — I just disagreed. Turns out Gary was a speaker too. I hadn’t connected the Twitter name Vicchi with Gary Gale, top man at Yahoo Engineering for Geo Technologies. Gary’s presentation was all about WOEIDs, something I knew nothing about until he stood up and explained them. Fascinating — highly relevant to the Twitter developer audience and expertly delivered. You can catch Gary’s WOEID presentation here.

So Twitter developers — that’s what Devnest is all about — anyone who’s interested in creating services and mashups with Twitter would do well to go along. The Organisers had done a phenomenal job — the place was packed.

Michael Camilleri came bounding over to say hi. Michael is one of the chaps behind FooCall (See last week’s post: “International calling for… FooCall“). It was good to see him. As we were discussing the state of British Venture Capitalists (in the context of this post), Paul Webster of Critical Path arrived to give us a glimpse into what’s coming with ShoZu. I agreed not to spill the beans though. Steve Kennedy popped over to say hi and pointed out that he almost bought a ton of Critical Path email services when he was supervising business development for Demon back in the good old dotcom days. Steve presented his business, DBVU, to the audience later in the evening — the company provides centralised analytics and monitoring for MySQL database servers. Very smart indeed.

With oodles of pizza having arrived and been consumed along with a good amount of beers, we headed into the auditorium and got started. I was wondering precisely how my presentation would be received, given the copious amounts of iPhones on show.

Angus, one of the organisers, had asked me to give a kind of ’state of the nation’ about mobile development, so I’d worked to create something like that, with due deference to the fact that most of the people in the room could write and deploy a desktop Twitter app in 180 seconds. Mobile might not be their forte, but I was working on the basis that they could easily adopt various mobile platforms with a low amount of friction, so I decided to keep it pretty high level.

The thrust of my argument was — yes, iPhone is great; Android..yeah… but please, please, please remember the fact that Nokia makes 1.4m handsets a day. A *DAY*. And don’t forget BlackBerry, either. And while you’re at it, a lot of the other platforms such as Vodafone 360 would be delighted to work with you.

Here’s the presentation:

The other presenter that evening, Paul Kinlan, was talking about Google Buzz. Paul is Developer Programmes Engineer at Google and, goodness me, he knew his stuff. I managed to keep up with most of the REST and CURL stuff — essentially he was outlining how Twitter developers could make use of the various Buzz APIs now becoming available. Very smart indeed.

I missed the majority of the buzzzy.com pitch, but essentially they’re providing a search interface for Google Buzz. I doubt it’ll be long before they’re snapped up.

Todd Chaffee delivered his pitch, “Social Media ROI in 140 seconds” and had me thinking carefully about the ROI issues with social media. Fascinating stuff. If you’re interested in the field, Todd’s presentation is here. Definitely talk to him.

There’s been some great feedback from the event — I’d like to thank everyone for taking the time to write a tweet regarding the presentation. It’s very kind of you. Instead of flooding my Twitter feed with ‘thank you, thank you’ messages, I have decided to cut’n'paste your messages and put a link into your Twitter profiles here on the site:

bensmithuk @3mobilebuzz Yep. Listening to @ew4n now. #devnest

vicchi I want @ew4n’s tee-shirt #devnest http://twitpic.com/17rh3j

chaffeet 30% of mobile apps are still developed for RIM according to @ew4n at #devnest 7.

richardBarley @ew4n banging the drum for Symbian at #devnest. Great stuff and good to hear

iamdanw Being pitched at to develop apps for symbian again. Shame symbian is an awful app environment, for both users and developers #devnest

(Dan, I agree, but do check out qt.nokia.com — Qt is really going to change things for the platform)

stevekennedyuk Great talk by @ew4n about mobile state of play – it’s all about Symbian #devnest

ketan @ew4n I would’ve stayed with nokia but ui and sync with my computer for email/music much easier on iPhone #devnest

(Fair point Ketan, but remember, you’re using the equivalent of a Fisher Price handset — capable, but the one-thing-at-a-time user model drives me nuts)

vicchi Just heard @ew4n equate Vodafone 360 with wife swapping. Never thought #devnest would be this much fun.

natts Amusing yet realistic talk by @ew4n at#devnest – iPhone only has 14% of world smartphone market in 2009 – http://bkite.com/3np10

michchapman At #devnest listening to @ew4n. Hmm when would be a good time to sneak out for more pizza?!

MarkABaker Fart apps is where its at. via @ew4n at #devnest

docstuart Enjoying first visit to #devnest, great first talk from @ew4n

ketan @ew4n great talk on mobile app development! Thanks. #devnest

MarkABaker missed recording @ew4n presentation at #devnest shame as execllent. Will ask him to do it again later on.

becva great first presentation from @ew4n #devnest

richardBarley Great talk from @ew4n on state of mobile development landscape. #devnest

nuxnix After @ew4n s talk at #devnest I am thinking the unthinkable – switching my iPhone. No not back to Symbian, but to give Android a try

@ew4n great presentation on #devnest yesterday

micrypt @ew4n Thanks for the splendid talk at #devnest yesterday. http://slidesha.re/9MRW10

Thank you everyone for your patience and attention — and thank you to the organisers for inviting me.

By the way: The organisers of Devnest have a 48-hour hackathon event coming soon, all focused on twitter. It’s called WarbleCamp and it’s on the 8th and 9th of May in London. Plus, it’s free. All the details you need are here: http://warblecamp.org/.

Finally, kudos to the sponsors of Devnest: PayPalX, Inuda, Sun Startup Essentials and Multizone Limited.

“Bring it on!” I said.

So I shall be there from 6pm this evening — if you’d like to come along, entry is free, but you do need to register.

There is also free pizza, beer and good networking — supported by new sponsor, PayPalX.

Here’s the agenda:

Agenda

6:00 pm – Pizza, Beer, Networking

6:30 pm – Developer talk

* Ewan Macleod – @Ew4n – Mobile State of the nation for developers
Ewan is Editor of Mobile Industry Review, http://www.mobileindustryreview.com He will illuminate the topic of which mobile platforms you should place your social media application development bets on?
* Gary Gale – @vicchi – Twitter’s use of our WOEIDs and associated technology
Gary is Director of Engineering in the UK for the Geo Technologies at Yahoo! which provides the tools and technologies that drive user location, geocoding, location identification and disambiguation within Yahoo!, both internally and via public services
* Paul Kinlan – @paul_kinlan – Introducing Google Buzz
Paul is Developer Programmes Engineer at Google. We are delighted to welcome google to our devnest community and hear and see and ask about what they are doing.

7:45 pm – Break, Network Time, 15mins

8:00 pm – 140 second show and tweet demo/preso

* Andras Serfozo – @SubZtep
* Tim Whitlock – @timwhitlock

Places available for sign up on the night. You have 140 secs to explain something, show something, or argue about something.

8:30 pm – Activities and events

* Chirp, an update on UK plans to attend the official twitter developer conference featuring @devmission
* WarbleCamp. the unofficial free twitter developer unconference @nuxnix

War·ble: n. a sound made by European Twitter devs when they work out the cost of going to @chirp

9:00 pm – Pub The networking continues…

The event is also kindly supported by: Inuda, Sun Startup Essentials and Multizone Limited

I look forward to seeing you there…

My company runs the Government 2010 series of web broadcast events and on April 22nd we have an event focused on Open Data. If any MoMo members are building or have built mobile apps based on open government data I’d be very keen to hear from you to potentially include you as a speaker. We’re streaming the event live from the Park Plaza Westminster Hotel from 9.30am to 4.00pm – the last event attracted some 1,200 web conference delegates and was a trending topic on Twitter in the UK.

More info at www.g2010.co.uk

Jeff Peel

You can contact Jeff via this page.

Well, here I am… Rafe filmed me doing an intro to the device here:

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And for anyone who’s interested in the phone, we also got the Sony Ericsson chaps to take us on a walk through of it, here:

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I would seriously consider getting one of these ‘for the weekend’. I particularly like the ‘Pro’ which comes with an integrated QWERTY keyboard…

Ty McMahan of the WSJ quotes Jeff Smith, CEO of SonicMule (the people who make the phenomenal music app, Smule) thus:

“Nokia isn’t on the shortlist of anything we do at Smule because we don’t think we can make any money.”

Unfortunately this is the view shared by absolutely everybody in Silicon Valley. There are about 8 exceptions that I’m aware of, perhaps a little more. I could name them right here, but doing so could risk iFascists with pitchforks turning up on their doors.

[iFascist definition: Someone who can only tolerate the iPhone, possibly Android and -- at a push, Palm's webOS. Anything other platform is deemed by an iFascist as irrelevant]

For a long time Nokia appeared confused at the growing iPhone and application furore. They’ve had applications for years — I’ve been using them for a long time. Indeed, striking the jackpot as a mobile developer before iPhone was really simple: Get Nokia to include your app on their millions of devices.

And for a long time, I have levelled a significant amount of criticism at the company. And I do mean significant. Just do a search for ‘Nokia’ and ‘Ovi Store’ here on Mobile Industry Review. Or, actually, just search Nokia. I’ve written some pretty biting things. It was a) how I felt and b) a reasonable reflection on reality. Rafe Blandford from All About Symbian (amongst others) would pull me down from the wall with good, smart ripostes. But fundamentally, I was right. Nokia hadn’t done X or Y. They hadn’t got this or that working. They’d released products or services into the marketplace that had silly bugs — with no easy way to remotely fix. Goodness me the list was as long as my arm.

Slowly, the company got round to it. The amount of times I internally rolled my eyes whilst I filmed Nik Savander explaining that the Ovi Store launch parameters had been missed and the company had entirely underestimated demand… I had to stifle a scream of angst when Savander then explained it would ‘take some time’ (words to that effect) to put the right. That stifled scream turned to a stifled wail when he clarified he was talking in quarters, not weeks or months.

I remember Rafe asking a question about Single Sign-On — a much discussed issue in NokiaWatcher circles — Nokia had bought all these companies, created all these services, and yet you had to have a different username for almost every single one. Silly things like that made the company look inept and positively last-century compared to the simple ease of the iPhone platform.

Installing an application was a sodding rigmarole. Ovi Maps was ridiculous (It couldn’t find the Colosseum in Rome, I kid ye not — I did that experiment).

But this is in the past. This is the problem with the kind of comments some of Silicon Valley’s finest are coming out with about Nokia.

Right now — *right now* — if you go and buy a Nokia N86, yes, you’ll typically have to keep on pressing ‘yes, yes, confirm, yes, use the 3G internet to connect, yes’ and so on. But the next generation… this is something to watch.

There are legions of consumers buying X6 and other such Nokia devices that are free from much of the friction of the previous era. It’s only going to get better.

Single Sign-On is fixed. The next stage will see Android-like unified login introduced to the startup procedure, automatically configuring everything from music, store, messaging, maps and so on. Try downloading an application from the Ovi Store on your bog standard N86 and, shock horror, it’ll simply install and run. No constant confirmations.

The next generation of Nokia devices — that is, the ones that hit the market in 6-8 months are going to be seriously relevant for developers, especially given the abject joy that the Qt development framework is bringing to many already.

Nokia has got the message, they’ve implemented the right changes and the next generation — well, it’s going to be really, really exciting.

The platform should be on every developer’s radar. But it should also be on ‘the shortlist’ as Jeff called it. Whilst developers are arsing around with Android, they should be evaluating and playing with Nokia’s Qt — their next generation development language. They should be taking baby steps right now by launching experimental toe-in-water apps.

There are over 130 million Symbian powered Qt devices in the market right now. Right now.

The latest version of Skype for Symbian just launched? Written in Qt.

Now, I understand that 130 million Symbian users cannot immediately search the Ovi Store for Skype and download it, because not all of them have the Ovi Store installed yet. But a lot of them do. And if you have Ovi Store installed (or pre-installed by default on all new Nokias), Skype — and any other app you’d care to develop — is a keyword search and a click or two away, just like it is on the iPhone.

Nokia is all about volume. 40 million iPhones/iPod Touches — that’s lovely and it’s delivering a lot of success for people.

Fast forward say 18 months… and let’s be a bit ballsy with some predictions… 500 million addressable Symbian devices in market? (Remember Nokia ships a million handsets before it gets out of bed every morning, ever day of the week) Hundreds of millions of users are all going to be looking for your app.

Get started now and avoid the rush.

And if you’re serious and you’d really like to be pointed in the right direction to get started developing with Nokia, I’ll help out. Drop me an email, ewan@mobileindustryreview.com.

Mobile Entertainment’s Stuart Dredge noticed this job posting that gives a hint that Apple may well integrate advertising into the iPhone SDK.

That has quite a few implications for the mobile marketing industry — much of it (rightly or wrongly) based around the Jesus Phone. It’ s a logical move to manage the advertising inventory on behalf of the developers. Most of the developers I speak to are far more concerned about creating smart applications that garner attention (and/or purchases) rather than worrying about the actual advertising network they use to support their free products. I almost feel that for many, advertising is the last thing developers reach for. Once they’ve made their app, they’ll integrate the relevant AdMob functions and boom… they’re done.

If Apple were to make it point-and-click simple to integrate advertising — literally a ‘insert banner ad here’ function in the SDK, that could well put a lot of other networks out in the cold. Would Apple *ban* them? Or simply make sure that it was a no brainer for developers to select Apple first and then give an option for a developer to choose another ad network?

As Stuart’s post points out, RIM has been working on something similar for some time — if memory serves, it’s announcement more or less got a round of applause from the gathered partners at the BlackBerry Alliance Partner event I attended last year.

AdMob famously own the iPhone ad space after their concerted push that began early last year — they and the rest of the marketplace will no doubt be watching Apple very, very carefully.

In the video, Penguin Books’ CEO, John Makinson, showed off just what they are planning. Do take a look. I can see millions of middle-class mothers reaching for the iPad to give their child the best reading experience possible.

Here’s the video:

I have to admit that I do like the idea of a single-function paper book vs an iPad for children’s reading — I worry about whether the child will be able to focus on a book like Spot The Dog when goodness knows how many wicked action games will be literally a click-away…

Still. The Spot The Dog experience — indeed everything John demonstrated — looks fantastic.

Would you deny your child an iPad after watching this?

I’ve used a lot of international calling services, particularly from my mobile phone. For a long time I made use of an array of services that enabled me to call locally and then use an existing balance to call internationally. When I was having to phone venture capitalists and board members in the States regularly, the costs used to mount up at 24p a minute from British Telecom. Calling internationally from a mobile was simply ridiculous. It still is, even with the ‘international’ option on the account, you’re still billed silly rates. I can call America from my mobile at 5p per minute, because I pay Vodafone a few quid a month extra.

I remember thinking ‘ahh, that’s better’. Because instead of £1.50 (or something crazy), 5p sounds good.

Until you realise that it’s costing Vodafone almost nothing. Yes they need to maintain the mobile cell, but if I can call any landline in the UK for ‘free’ (unlimited, fair use), why can’t I call America for a few pence a minute? You know? 2p, something like that?

Well, the answer is that it’s still a good way to garner cash from us all — and we can’t believe it’s not costing £1.50 a minute, so we pay.

And besides that, it’s convenient, right? Pick up your mobile and dial…

No.

It’s almost a fifth cheaper if you use FooCall. It’s even cheaper if you pay a few pounds a month.

Quite apart from the fact that anyone who’s named their company in that manner deserves my business, I’m delighted that they’ve made an iPhone application to make the experience super simple. I’d like to see them deploy on other platforms too.

Let’s have a look at the application:

This is the main screen. It’s really easy to use. Once you’ve created a free account — that process takes 20 seconds — you can start calling. Literally dial the number you want.

FooCall then calculates a local access point — i.e. an 020 number that counts toward your inclusive minutes. It places the call to the local access number and automatically dials your destination for you.

This all happens in about a second. Within moments you’re connected. Done.

Now let’s talk about rates. By default, it’s 1.2p/minute to the United States from the UK. That’s a pretty good rate in itself. But if you’re calling regularly, you might like to take note of the FooCall FooPlan. It’s £2.75/month and reduces that rate down to 0.8p/minute.

Of course, that’s a popular route. Let’s pick out some random ones from their list:

UK to New Zealand? 1.4p/min

UK to Bahamas? 3p/min

If you’d like to confirm your reservation at The Sanctuary at Parrot Cay on the Turks & Caicos Islands? 13.7p/min.

You can even call Antarctica. That’s 100.7p per minute — but drops to 67.2p if you’re on the FooPlan.

FooCall isn’t just about the iPhone though — you can use their web-based service very easily. Just login, click ‘call’, select or type in your desired number and boom… this screen appears:

Pretty nifty, eh? That’s a unique number for you that puts you straight through to your destination without any messing around.

I particularly like that if I add a contact on the iPhone app, it’s synchronised straight through to the web version of FooCall too.

This is one of those services that, even if you don’t call abroad regularly, you should definitely have sitting on your iPhone — so that when you *do*, it’s easily accessible. Download the FooCall iPhone app from this link — and when you setup your account, you’ll be credited with 50p’s worth of credit to get you started (enough for a 41 minute call to the States!)

Nice work, FooCall!

Yes! It’s the new Jabra Extreme noise cancelling Bluetooth headset, complete with handy car charger. I will do a video shortly.

– Taken at 10:54 AM on March 05, 2010 – uploaded by ShoZu

Popped to the Post Office to pick this up…

– Taken at 10:52 AM on March 05, 2010 – uploaded by ShoZu

Is it me or is this a little bit of a rubbish offer? Buy mum a phone for mother’s day and Phones4U will give you a beauty treatment free? I suppose if I was in the market for a phone for mum that could sway me?

– Taken at 10:30 AM on March 05, 2010 – uploaded by ShoZu

Right now, one of the biggest things that prevents smart entrepreneurs (British or otherwise) from going to live and work in Silicon Valley, is the Visa issue. Sure, most nationalities can get 3 months worth of time in the States, but after that, they need to leave and come back again… and thus begins the dance with the immigration chaps at San Francisco International Airport.

This is the comfort blanket that most British entrepreneurs cling to.

It stops them actually doing anything.

Instead they arse about in the UK dealing with total numbskull venture capitalists — most of whom are playing the role admirably up until it comes to coughing up cash. It is all about risk, as John Malloy from Blue Run Ventures pointed out in a recent interview we did.

In Silicon Valley, they get risk.

Your brilliant, amazing, its-gotta-work idea is risky. Anything new is inherently risky. But in America, you try it. You mitigate as much risk as you can then you try it. You get stuck in and you see what happens.

In the UK, entrepreneurs try too. The first thing that happens is they become social outcasts. They’re labeled, with a bit of a laugh, ‘delboys’. But those doing the labelling do actually mean it. And this is the horrifying thing in the UK — normal people do quite like to thwart the efforts of anyone thinking outside the box. There are two fundamental points about the British culture contributing to this:

1. British people are inherently jealous of any success whatsoever. I often joke, ‘that shouldn’t be allowed‘, when I hear someone has made a pile of cash. I am being ironic, but it’s fascinating to watch the number of people who actually nod along with the statement.

2. Know your place. British people need to ‘place’ you in society. They need to understand where precisely you are in the hierarchy. And if you’re seeking to change that hierarchy — by doing something entrepreneurial, well, that’s your fault. See point 1.

Executives in big UK companies are super examples of this. Whilst they’re earning — for example — £200k a year, they will do their utmost to be suspicious of startups. What’s particularly annoying for these executives is discovering that the startup founders were middle managers — subservient to him — prior to starting their company. And, with just a signature, this executive could ‘make’ the startup company by granting them a stupendous contract.

What typically happens in most deals is that British businessmen (and women) will evaluate whether or not they’d like to see the other person be successful. The answer is resolutely ‘no’. Therefore all sorts of difficult questions ensue — how are you backed, what happens if, I’m concerned about the risk… all the sorts of questions that are never asked of bigger, more established companies. Because of course, you’re never actually dealing with the founders of big companies. So you never have to deal with the jealousy issue.

This is a critical reason why most tech startups in the UK go absolutely nowhere. You can’t legislate against it. It’s built straight into the culture.

Which is why the cleverest escape.

The biggest misjudgement I ever made was staying in the UK throughout my twenties and not moving to Silicon Valley. Instead I fought tooth and nail against the establishment. By hook or by crook, I managed to get my ideas out the door. I paid for it. I mean, I literally had to fund it all, with the exception of the initial capital. Which came from… you guessed… America! Or, An American venture capitalist. Once, I managed to secure a small amount of investment from a thoroughly understanding angel investor. Once. Those people are unfortunately few and far between in the United Kingdom. Although I worked with smart Americans all the time, I failed to recognise reality: If you’re starting a new tech business, the only place — the ONLY place — you should be is Silicon Valley.

The amount of times I have been nailed to the wall by insanely jealous British executives is simply ridiculous. Any business concept I’ve had — it’s typically gone nowhere because when I try and pitch it to the Brits, in order that someone actually pay for it, the answer is invariably no, no and thrice no. Until some bright spark starts the business in the States, gets a good bit of venture capital and… ‘momentum’. Then I have had to watch with familiar dismay as that same executive gets on a plane and flies out to do business with them.

Which is why you find me in San Francisco every two weeks. Well, I was there more or less every two weeks last year. There’s a baby on the way here so I’ve had to change my priorities slightly. It’s a surreal experience, going from the British boardroom to the American boardroom.

Can’t-do becomes Can-do. The word ‘yes’ is used a lot more. There is no immediate feeling of jealousy. Instead, there’s excitement.

Sit down with a Bank Manager in Silicon Valley and they will — genuinely — treat you as though you’re serious. As though you could well become the next Bill Gates. Talk to your accountant and they’ll do the same. They’ll make sure you’re setup in a tax efficient manner so that when you get ‘your first round’, it’ll be easy to grow the company. You’ll fall off your chair when the chap picks up the phone and calls his friend (“he’s usually good for $20-30k and he loves mobile stuff”). You’ll start having heart palpitations when your accountant puts the phone to his chest and asks, “Can you do a drink with him tonight?”

They move fast, they move seriously, they move with passion and excitement. It’s everything you’ve experienced in the UK, but inverted.

By the way, for the Americans reading — and for the British reading who don’t quite get the ‘jealousy’ thing that I’m talking about, here’s a good example: This is a Bugatti Veyron in Manchester (via Autoblog).

That is a traffic warden putting a parking ticket on the Bugatti. That is also a crowd cheering on the traffic warden. Why? Well it’s because each of the people watching will never, ever, ever have the capacity to even think about buying an £800,000 Bugatti. They know it. They know their place. Why should someone else be allowed to be successful enough to blow almost a million quid on a car? Yeah. Fluck’em! Rich B’stards!

Alas, this is generally the attitude found in the UK. It doesn’t really matter out on the streets. But when you’re trying to get a contract or trying to get a company to buy your new service — 9 times out of 10 — you’ll have to deal with a middle manager who would have been stood right at the front of that crowd above, jeering. They can’t be arsed to think outside the box. They can’t be arsed to startup their own business. And they’ll sure as hell lord it over you and, if at all possible, not give you the deal. Or they will give you the deal, but on punitive, ridiculous terms.

1 out of 10 business people get it. These are the chaps who contact you, get you in for a meeting and then award you the deal there and then. These are the people who understand entrepreuenrs — they’re the ones who will actually add a zero on to your cheap-as-chips pricing, commenting, “I actually need you to stay in business, ok? And we can afford this. We need good service.”

It doesn’t happen very often at all, unfortunately. It’s why you’ll have seen one or two British tech startups succeed. At some point, they got a 1-in-10 person at one of their clients and managed to establish themselves and hire some staff. In the UK you need a lot of middle managers so that they can do business with the other middle managers at your prospective clients. Middle managers cannot stand the smell of a successful entrepreneur, especially if, last year, that entrepreneur was doing their job.

Of course, after reading this, most British entrepreneurs still won’t get it. I speak to British mobile and tech entrepreneurs all the time. They simply don’t believe what I say about Silicon Valley. Some do believe, but — well, it’s all too easy to sit in the UK and spunk the little money they do have up the wall.

Most of them invest in hope.

But there’s a looming problem for these entrepreneurs. This rumoured ‘StartUp Visa Act’ that the Americans are discussing would completely and utterly destroy any barriers for the poor British entrepreneur. So explains BusinessWeek:

The StartUp Visa Act would create a new type of two-year visa, called an EB-6, available to any immigrant entrepreneur who has secured at least $250,000 in capital from accredited venture capitalists or angel investors. After two years, the person would become a permanent U.S. resident if his or her business has met one of three criteria: created five full-time jobs in the U.S., raised an additional $1 million from investors, or achieved $1 million in revenue.

If this is made law, I can foresee bucketloads of talent heading West.

And good for them, all things being equal, I’ll be there too.

Meanwhile to all British entrepreneurs reading, your head can go back in the sand now.

Update: Thanks to @micrypt for adding this post into the Hacker News feed here. I noticed an excellent comment on that discussion by Pete Warden who links to both Paul Carr’s Guardian column (“I’m calling time of death on London’s startup industry“) on a similar subject and his own analysis (“You can’t fail if you don’t try. Or why I left the UK“).

Definitely worth reading both.