Category Archives: Mobile

Enkin: Revolutionary GPS Application for Android

If you take two Computational Visualistics students, give them Google Android’s SDK and motivate them with a $275.000 award , you’ll get Enkin, a revolutionary handheld navigation concept.

Here is how Enkin’s creators present it:

“Enkin” introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices.

What makes Enkin so unique is that it has as “live mode”, meaning that for example when pointing your phone camera towards a building that is in fact an hospital, the interface will indicate so.

The user interface has three different modes:

– Map mode: This is a two-dimensional mode and similar to
classical maps applications. It provides a quick overview of
all active location-based content and lets you easily manage
your data.

– Landscape mode: This mode resembles loosely Google
Earth’s 3D view. It enables your content’s third dimension
by embedding it into a three-dimensional landscape.

– Live mode: This acts as the bridge to reality. Now your content
is displayed extending real physical objects instead of
computer graphics by using the device’s built-in camera.

Watch their video here to see it in action.

Phones equipped with Android haven’t hit the market yet, so when this happens, Enkin will be more impressive than when used from an emulator.

Android proves that it will truly revolutionize the way we search things from our cell phones, especially local information.

Visit Enkin.net for more information. Hat tip to Wireless Watch Japan for the info.

The Associated Press To Launch a Free Mobile News Service

The Associated Press announced yesterday that it will develop an ad-supported mobile service to deliver stories and photos to advanced mobile phones, including the iPhone.

With this service called “Mobile News Network”, people will be able to read local news but also national and international news from AP network.

The service was designed specifically for the iPhone but can be used with other smartphones. Mobile News Network will be organized by ZIP code. I think AP should also think about adding Location Based Services with phones that are GPS-capable, the iPhone isn’t yet, but they’ve been some rumors predicting that Apple will add this functionality in the next generation of this device.

Local ads would be sold by newspapers and also national ads served by ad companies. Mobile advertising companies such as JumpTap, Medio, Google or Yahoo! will be very interested in serving ads on these networks, since the traffic will likely be tremendous.

Each party, news providers and ad sellers will get 50% of the revenue.

This will help struggling newspapers find other sources of revenues.

Via washingtonpost.com

Google Sees Surge Of Traffic From iPhones

According to the NYT, traffic to Google from iPhones surged during Christmas, and has even surpassed traffic from any other type of mobile device. People love the web experience provided by the iPhone so much that they surf more than traditional mobile phone’s owners, for whom it’s still not that easy to go online.

“The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those running the BlackBerry system have 10 percent.”

Other handset manufacturers should replicate this kind of experience to increase the number of people using the web on the go, and to help the mobile web truly take off.

When Will Mobile Advertising Really Take Off?

A study made by Gartner predicted that revenues made from mobile advertising will be worth $11 billion by 2011. But not everyone is that optimistic, even people from mobile advertising companies. Business Week reports what people from Nokia or Screentonic have said about such figures:

Kuhn, CEO of a mobile advertising company acquired by Microsoft (MSFT) in May, views most analyst predictions as way too rosy.

Mike Baker, vice-president in change of Nokia’s (NOK) ad business, also sees a longer wait, suggesting it will take at least five years for the industry to surpass $10 billion in annual revenue. “The near-term visibility is cloudy,” he says.

I think 2007 was really the year when mobile advertising companies really started to push their services and big brands trying them. We just need to be patient to see where we’re headed, and maybe see the big tech brands such as Google or Microsoft adjusting their strategies.

Free WiFi In Luxembourg With Location-Based Services

The City of Luxembourg, capital of Luxembourg, a small country bordered by France, Germany, and Belgium, has created a free Wifi infrastructure called Hotcity. The Wifi service has been live since July 2007 in a small area of the city, and from December 2007, more access points will be added to cover the train station area.

By 2008, free Wifi access will be available anywhere in the city, thanks to 400 access points.

The interesting part about this project is that Hotcity will provide location-based services, which will be launched during the Christmas period, to allow users to easily locate shops, restaurants, or bars.

This platform will also be open, an API is available to allow developpers to build applications that users can use when using Hotcity’s WiFi access, which is great.

Via Blognation Belgium.

Google Releases Android SDK: Ready to Rule the Juicy Mobile Market

So as promised, Google has released Android SDK, which will allow developers to create all kind of applications to run on the first solid open platform for mobile devices.

Google has revealed Android’s main features and seriously, this proves that this OS will revolutionize the way people use and interact with their mobile phones. Some of the most exciting features are:

  • Application framework: you don’t like the pre-installed calendar application on your “Google” phone? No worries, replace it with any other application.

  • Integrated browser: based on the open source WebKit engine, used by Safari. The integrated browser allows you to view full web pages and also has great zoom capabilities, like the new Opera Mini browser.
  • Optimized graphics powered by a custom 2D graphics library; 3D graphics based on the OpenGL ES 1.0 specification: get ready to truly enjoy 3D games on your cell phones, and other kinds of rich animations. Check out this demo video on Youtube to see a demo of the Android version of Quake. Games will definitely look similar or better that what’s available on BREW phones.
  • Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi : with a phone powered by Android, you’ll have nothing to envy to the Iphone or other phones with built-in WiFi.
  • Rich development environment including a device emulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling, and a plugin for the Eclipse IDE
  • Camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent)

Seriously, this is the best thing that ever happened in the mobile industry. Once developers will start providing applications, we will realize that these things will make our mobile user experience more enjoyable and with no-limit.

Google hasn’t decided to build a GooglePhone, instead, it provided an open source mobile OS to develop thousands of phones, capable or running an unlimited number of applications.

This will allow Google to dramatically increase their mobile market share and obtain tons personal data that they will of course use for better ad targeting.

Follow the discussion at Techmeme.

Mobile Search Kinda Sucks – But Does Anyone Care?

Peggy Anne Salz wrote a post at MSearchGroove where she discusses about the findings of a mobile search study made my Informa.

The goal of the study was to evaluate the relevance of Mobile/WAP results returned by search engines such as Google and Yahoo! on UK mobile carriers’s portals.

The study reveals that Mobile and WAP sites were hard to find in these search engines’s results, and that their relevance was often very poor:

  • Google and Yahoo off-portal Fixed Internet results were spot-on in terms of relevance. (After all, Internet search is what they were designed to do and that legacy makes it patently difficult to switch gears and excel in mobile from day one. As one content aggregator put it: “Google and Yahoo: They talk mobile but think Web.”)
  • Off-portal WAP results were a no-show and poor at best. From the findings: “Results were consistently off-topic, often absurdly so.”

It’s true that operators and/or search engines often tend to want to display traditionnal search results first, rather than mobile search ones.

According to Peggy, Informa informed operators about these issues regarding mobile sites results and it seems like they were unaware of that or really don’t care.

The operators claimed to be unaware of the problems; even more shocking is their indifference.A Vodafone spokesman said: “We’re offering the Internet on your mobile, and from the web results you highlight, we are satisfied that users are getting the information they want.” Translated: delivering fixed Internet content via mobile is the priority; WAP isn’t.

Yep, Vodafone have been saying the same thing since since the launch of their new Vodafone live! portal in the UK: they want to allow their users to replicate on their mobile devices what they can do on a computer. Pretty easy to do, right? Nope, even if handsets are getting better, you still cannot have the same Web experience on your small screen than on your PC.

That’s why there’s still a growing need for mobile specific sites, allowing a better user experience. But operators somehow tend to ignore that, and want to force people to view transcoded sites rather than made for mobile ones.

Peggy concludes her post by saying that no one really talks about the core issue: the state of mobile web. Does it even exist? Should there be a desktop Web, and a mobile Web, with sites designed for handset devices? Or does the mobile Web just consist of transcoded websites?

I personnally that we should have both. If I want to check out the New York Times website while on the go, then a transcoded version is fine. However, if I want to book a hotel room from my mobile phone, I would strongly prefer to have a site designed for mobile devices.

It’s true that there is an obvious lack of real standards for the mobile web, so all actors in this industry: operators, the W3C, mobile developers, mobile startups etc must make an effort to create them and educate site owners. Otherwise, I really don’t see how to trully improve the web experience of people using mobile devices.

How To Get Full Access To WSJ.com For Free (Wall Street Journal)

Most of the articles on the Wall Street Journal website are only available to paying subscribers. Rupert Murdoch said that he may make the site free but there’s already a way to view all articles on WSJ.com for free.

The Wall Street Journal website has a mobile friendly version, for subscribers who want to access to view financial while on the go. Now here’s the nice part: the mobile version of WSJ.com offers access to the full version of articles that are only available to paying subscribers on the PC website.

That means that anyone can view all articles published on WSJ.com for free just by visiting the mobile site!

For example, if you visit WSJ.com and want to read this article, you’ll only get an excerpt, only paying subscribers can view it in its entirety.

However, the mobile version will allow you to view the entire article, without having to be a subscriber, as you can see here.

The mobile version of WSJ.com is available at this adress: http://mobile2.wsj.com/device/index.php. You can visit the mobile site from your desktop computer, or by typing www.wsj.com from your mobile, you’ll be automatically redirected to the mobile version.

So now anyone can view the best financial news for free! Enjoy 😉