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.  

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."

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

 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.  

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. 

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.  

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.

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

Further, more than half of mobile data subscribers (51%), who saw an ad responded to it by sending a text-message, clicking on it, or calling a specific number. 

Fifty One Percent? That would mean that of the 58 millon people that Neilson says recalled seeing a mobile ad between the second and forth quarters of 2007, 29 million interacted with the ad in some way. Mobile advertising has been a powerful performer over the last few years, but this exceeds anything I have experienced or read. Neilson and Media Post may want to take another look at those findings.

The Nielsen study was based on a survey of more than 22,000 active mobile data users who used at least one non-voice service in the fourth quarter of 2007. Participants were asked about responses to banner ads, text ads, and video advertising, among other mobile formats.

This may be considered more of a battle between carriers and developers than my previous post, but it still brings the walled garden strategy into question.

Mozilla recently announced that they were examining moving into the mobile space with a browser for Microsoft Windows Mobile and embedded Linux.

With the announcement came the typical caveats that some carriers would embrace this while others would outright block the application in order to control the user experience and revenue. The most interesting quote to come from MacWorld’s coverage of the announcement is below.

In Japan, operators said their subscribers transmit three to four times more data when allowed to browse the open Web than they do when kept in a walled garden.

Now some carriers claim that their ‘walls’ protect their users from other dangers, including viruses and criminal acts, but I have yet to see much news out of Japan regarding these types of attacks. Are they coming? I think most people in the industry would answer with a resounding yes. Is the walled garden strategy the best defense? In my opinion, anything that limits the mobile experience hinders innovation, adoption and user satisfaction and it appears that Japan agrees.

In 2000 I worked at AvantGo, a mobile content site. Our software helped popular media sites easily move into the then budding mobile space. One of our selling points for publishers and for users of our software was that we designed each mobile site for the most popular screen resolutions on the market. At the time I left, we were making four versions of each site. Though this sounds like a lot of extra work, it was part one of our selling points and something the users became used to (and craved) – content designed for their device.

Fast-forward to 2007 and the release of the iPhone with a browser designed to bring the ‘whole internet’ to your mobile device. As most people who have used and iPhone will tell you it does a pretty good job at doing just that.

The iPhone has also increased the number of people accessing mobile data services. Fierce Mobile Content reported the following from AT&T Mobility president and CEO Ralph de la Vega at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona this year.

“According to de la Vega, 95 percent of iPhone owners regularly surf the web, even though 30 percent had never done so prior to iPhone ownership. In addition, 51 percent have viewed videos via YouTube, and nine out of 10 rated the device better than their previous handset.”

That is great news! Mobile Web usage is growing. But now we need to understand where these users are going and, more importantly,why sites like Digg, Facebook and Travelocity are designing sites specifically for the iPhone even though it includes Safari. These are not just stripped down mobile sites for handsets and smartphones that include the iPhone, but specific URLs with a dedicated layout and functionality designed for the iPhone. Add in Apple's own site where they feature hundreds of iPhone deisgned Web sites and applications and it is clear that is this not a small movement, but a strategy that companies, big and small, are adotping.

So what does this all mean? Well it goes back to what AvantGo preached as early as 2000.

There will not be a time in the forseeable future, where there will no longer be a need for products like Safari, Skyfire and Microsoft’s Deepfish. But for now, we need companies like AT&T to break down the traffic they are seeing into mobile, and non-mobile sites so we can better understand how users are accessing the Internet on their phones.

The dollar amount does not intrigue me as much as the strategic choice to make decisions appropriate to mobile advertising. (Disclosure: I have worked for a few mobile advertising companies since 2000.) I cannot tell you how excited I am that this discussion is happening now. I started in mobile advertising in 2000 (with all the hype and press), and then people were promising the world. Now in 2007, things are just beginning to deliver on the promises of years ago. Critical mass has been met in terms of the number of users of the mobile Internet (and that term includes ringtones and wallpapers as well as browsing) and the eyeballs are there to make advertisers interested in this medium. It is different. It is unique. There is a lot of education ahead of us in the industry. But still, they know mobile is here, and they are INTERESTED! Let’s educate them appropriately.