KempMullaney.com

I have been focussed on mobile recently and this is the direction I plan on taking my blog. Still, when I find examples of good business practices and strategies, I will be sure to share them.

This week Twitter, the talk of 'the tubes,' has faced their fair number of challenges. Namely, their uptime has been challenging their downtime, leading some to speculate on the scalability of the platform.

What is a start-up to do? Share with their users. In a post today, they addressed the recent outages. The reason behind these problems: they just don't know, but they are actively working to isolate and rectify the problem.

How did I discover this? Through Twitter. Evan Williams, co-founder, sent this out on his Twitter stream. Not only did they publish this, they promoted it to their users. The only criticism would be whether or not they took too long to offer an explanation. TechCrunch expressed their displeasure. Then updated the post when Twitter publicly addressed the problem.

PS - Diesel Sweeties got in on the joke too.  

Posted by kempblog at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is an entertaining view on the history of the cell phone with interesting facts and milestones. It culminates with the iPhone in 2007. How many handsets do you recognize?

Posted by kempblog at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MacWorld and Fierce Wireless report today that Sony Ericsson has merged Java and Flash on its upcoming handsets under the name Project Capuchin. Ulf Wretling, director of Sony Ericsson Developer World, was interviewed by MacWorld. From the article:

Java has many APIs (application programming interfaces) that let developers access phone functions like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and secure payments, while Flash lacks some of those hooks, he said. Flash, however, offers some nice user-interface capabilities compared to Java. Using both, developers can build a game, for example, that uses Flash for the menu and Java for other features. "They can mix and match," said Wretling. "A Java application can utilize graphics and UI components both from Java and from Flash."

This has the potential to produce some incredible, integrated applications with friendly user interfaces.

Project Capuchin is scheduled to be available the second half of this year.

Posted by kempblog at 08:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 The Mozilla Foundation announced that the mobile version or Firefox, Fennec, is coming down the pipe. A release date was not included with the announcement. Mitchell Baker, the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation and of Mozillla Corp. delivered the information at the Web 2.0 conference on Thursday. From Yahoo:

"The key to the Internet should be the same. The core is information: What can I get to and what can I do with it?" she said.

While technical constraints affect mobile browsing, psychological constraints affect the experience on the PC, caused by usage habits formed over decades, Baker said.

The browser will be built on an open platform.  

 

Posted by kempblog at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Google recently added mobile image ads to AdWords. Here is my quick first past

The Good:

• Advertiser can choose ad size,
• Sizes are limited to keep download times low, and
• All ads MUST link to a mobile-friendly landing page.

The Bad:

• The ad size does not appear to be served dynamically.
  

Imagine a 180 pixel wide image on a 360 pixel wide screen or the other way around. Due to the various screen resolutions on the market today this could diminish click-thru rates on mobile ads.

Check out the Google video on mobile image ads. 

Posted by kempblog at 08:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This may be harsh, but when I saw the article Google, Adobe cite offline access to Web application as a trend on MacWorld today it reminded me of my previous post regarding Occasionally Connected Computing (OCC). From the article:

“Really, what it’s about is developer choice,” said Ryan Stewart, Adobe platform evangelist. Previously, the Web was limited to the browser, but now it is expanding, Stewart said. He cited several examples of new trends in Web technologies, including Prism, that bring Web applications to the desktop in a similar manner to Adobe.

Though I feel this has been a long time coming, it is good to see two industry leaders and developers embracing this idea. As for the mobile space, Google has already announced that Google Gears will be made available on and off line for mobile devices.  

Posted by kempblog at 07:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I started my new job at PlayPhone.com. The site sells ring tones, wallpapers and applications to consumers. In addition to PlayPhone.com, they also power the mobile sites for several large retailers, television stations and general content owners, and I will be building and managing these relationships.

This is a bit different from my previous roles in mobile applications and strategies, but I am looking forward to rounding out my mobile experience.  

My new email address at work is kempm at playphone dot com.  

Posted by kempblog at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

GigaOm has a terrific article, What Makes a Good Mobile Application Great. Their examples are Flickr mobile, ShoZu, and Mobile Google Reader.

This is suggested reading for anyone working on a mobile application.  

Posted by kempblog at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Type www.businessweek.com into your cell phone’s browser and you will be re-directed to www.businessweek.mobi, a version formatted for mobile devices. More and more sites are employing this strategy to help direct mobile users to mobile content. This is great way to help promote the mobile Web and accelerate users getting to the content they want, but there are some drawbacks that content owners need to address.

Browsers and users’ choice
With Safari on the iPhone users, new browsers like Deepfish and Skyfire on the way, and the increased browsing capabilities of Internet Explorer Mobile and Opera Mobile, users want to be able to choose between a mobile formatted site and the traditional Web site.

Reasons for this vary. If you look at MacWorld’s Web site and compare it to what they offer mobile users, you will notice that the content is significantly reduced. If my handset has the capability to render the normal site, albeit more slowly, I should have the option to get to the content I want.

Another example came when I was using the AT&T 8525 to access corporate email. A colleague sent me the link to an article in BusinessWeek. The 8525 has a nice landscape screen and runs Internet Explorer Mobile which can view most sites. When I attempted to follow the link to the article, the redirect BusinessWeek uses kept forcing me back to the their .mobi home page. It was incredibly frustrating to be forced to browse where BusinessWeek thought I wanted to go.

I had to wait until I could access the site from the laptop to see the article. Had this been business critical information regarding a customer, it could have had a negative affect on the meeting I was about to attend.

The answer is simple – allow users a choice and apply cookies. If users can toggle between versions at their discretion and use cookies to record their preference, content owners will not frustrate and lose readers.

Posted by kempblog at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It appears that Occasionally Connected Computing (or OCC as Intel identified it) may finally be approaching with Silverlight and Google Gears for mobile devices on the horizon. TechCrunch covered the announcements.

Google defines Google Gears as “an open source browser extension that lets developers create web applications that can run offline.”

Nokia announced that Silverlight by Microsoft will be made available for S60 smartphones. From the press release :

 

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications.

 

Back in 2005, I wrote about the advantages of what was then called Occasionally Connected Computing in three posts:

• Occasionally Connected,
• RSS and Mobility – Laptop, and
• Occasionally Connected with AvantGo.

These new environments and services will hopefully make this model a mainstay in mobile computing.

UPDATE - Brighthand has a great explanation of Google Gears here.

Posted by kempblog at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)