The BBC reports here that the Symbian operating system will be made open source.   Symbian is currently used by Nokia and Sony Ericsson and is owned by a consortium formed out of the UK electronics and PDA maker Psion.  I owned several Psion devices and they were well ahead of their time.  But, that was over 10 years ago; prior to implementation of Bluetooth and prior to integrated smartphones.  The operating system was great, but was never really developed further under the Symbian tab.   Hopefully, hopefully, the open source community will be able to do something great with it.

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So like a lot of geeks today I read the tweets and live blogs about the rumor that a new iPhone would appear.  No disappointment – Apple smacked the ball out of the park.  They reacted perfectly to the market conditions:  keep innovating through the recession, drop prices where you can and provide lower cost entry points into the product families.

I owned the first gen iPhone, bought the 3G last year and was about to buy the new iPhone 3G S.  $299 for the new one? No problem.  One small problem though, the at&t small print:

For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB).

So my reward for having been an at&t customer for 6 years and bought both iPhones?  A $400 premium.

F**k you at&t.  This is why as soon as Verizon get’s iPhone, you are toast.

For more understanding of why this happens read this Wikipedia article on Monopoly Rent.  Essentially certain economic conditions allow companies to take the piss out of consumers.  The problem is that whilst they have tremendous leverage over the consumer with the demand this device will draw, we still have a choice.

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Way back in 1992 in the UK there was a hotspot based phone service called Rabbit, launched by Hutchison (now Hutchison Whampoa).  In essence a user bought a handset, resembling something between a mobile and a cordless phone that could be used to make phone calls within 100 meters of a hotspot.  My home town, Manchester, had more or less full coverage by late 1992.

According to wikipedia 12,000 base-stations were live and at the peak the service had 10,000 subscribers.  The service ceased in late 1993 due to price drops on the analog cellular networks and the ability for those networks to accept inbound calls.

The phone-less sibling of the iPhone, the iPod Touch, is now becoming the successor to the Rabbit.  Loaded with Skype (or equivalent VoIP service) and a headset with microphone the iPod Touch is now a nearly fully fledged phone.  With the new 3.0 iPhone / Touch operating system it will be a fully fledged outbound and inbound phone experience.  Of course, the only place you’ll be able to make or receive calls is within range of a subscribed wifi hot spot.

The irony is that the cellular networks superseded the Rabbit, but the iPod Touch and VoIP could supersede the cellular phone.

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Copy and paste, data tethering, and now Flash — it looks like the pré’s going to fill in a lot of unchecked iPhone feature boxes, doesn’t it?

And I thought Palm OS was dead – shows how much I know! Well, OK, Palm OS will be discontinued in favor of the new Palm webOS platform. Having been a major fan of Palm from the early days, I’ve always been a little disappointed with the lack of development of Pam OS and for a few years it would have seemed that they had abandoned it in favor of Windows Mobile. The new palm pré and it’s palm webOS platform look pretty neat and hints at being a real contender for Mac/iPhone users and now joins the Open Screen Project.

As mobile application developers we have the best products from all relevant manufacturers and whilst we are almost entirely a Mac run company, we still feel pretty objective. I have certainly constantly been on the look out for alternative products and, a little while ago, bought myself a Nokia N95, but nothing has really stood up to the iPhone.

Very exited by the pré and very keen to play with the webOS platform – and a phone that will support Flash! Not sure my team will share my enthusiasm as we now have another development framework to develop in – luckily this is a JavaScript based interface so should be pretty simple to develop for

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A subject close to my heart, blogged elegantly by Tom Evslin at Fractals of Change. 

Essentially it looks as if the FCC will do the right thing by the ‘whitespace’ UHF spectrum freed up by the movement to digital TV.  Tom explains the technologies and approaches the large US telcos are banking on, LTE (enhanced 3G) and WiMAX, may be superseded before they become widely available.

So what does that mean to the rest of us?  That we will have ubiquitous wireless internet data (and hence voice) coverage at fixed line speeds that does not necessitate the astronomical capital investment that is required for cellular networks.  Thus more and better competition for our hard earned dollars.

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Possibly the most famous quotation from the Net Neutrality debate thus far is from US Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska):

‘(The internet) … it’s a series of tubes.”

You sort of know what he means and that the correct colloquial term for an internet connection is ‘pipe’ but the point he was trying to make actually was quite important.  The internet has choke points that  occur the closer you get to the user.   Senator Stevens believes that consumer level ISPs should be able to charge content providers such as Yahoo!, Google et al. whatever they want notionally dependent on the priority that the traffic would take over the network.   So, streaming video would be most expensive, buffered download video next, Voice over IP (VoIP), then coming in last compressed images and text (HTML).

On one level this might sound perfectly reasonable – after all, if YouTube’s content places more of a load on local internet connections than the New York Times, why shouldn’t the former pay more?  There are two main reasons this is an absolutely horrendous idea:

1. The consumer will end up paying more.  Inevitably if content providers are charged on a heterogenous basis for network access then your ISP will replicate the billing structure to you.  Providers of pseudo-monopoly infrastructure, such as the phone or cable company adore complexity in billing.  Look at your home phone or cellphone bill and the range of plans and billing structures for what is a utility service. Feel like you are getting screwed?  That’s because you are and the incumbent phone companies and cable firms will look to do the same for internet access.

2. The local infrastucture duopoly of the phone and cable companies are content providers themselves.  We are already hearing about the possibility of metered billing for internet access  apparently to protect everyone from certain heavy-downloaders ‘abusing’ the flat price structure.   As the English say – bollocks to that.  The phone companies are installing fiber infrastructure and offering video service and the cable firms are upgrading their networks to offer better and more video services.  The last thing they want are pesky video download services like Apple TV or Amazon Unbox to run on their networks without being able to charge a premium and price them out of the market.

So unless you think you should pay more for your internet access and only buy video services from one of two companies, then watch out for the political candidates in the election speaking about this.   Yahoo! has some coverage here .

To follow – more on this topic and the impact on digital marketing.

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There are some distinct advantages to being British and doing work in the US but there’s also a few disadvantages. Today I am reminded of one in particular: modesty. It’s a blessing and a curse all by itself and very often I’m prompted to be less shy about boasting our company’s achievements.

Last Exit was borne out of a company called Deepend. Started by three Royal college mavericks, one of them the inimitable Gary Lockton, the company was twice named world’s #1 creative interactive agency. We were a design powerhouse and also a technology pioneer, notching up firsts in Flash development, iTV (interactive television), mobile, integrated campaigns and online video. When I started Last Exit with Andy Beach, online video was a speciality of ours and as one of Apple’s technology partners we produced boutique encoding services and development services for interactive QuickTime. Interactive video, we were sure, would be big and bigger, would be distribution and sharing of video. To that end, we developed the first interactive QuickTime powered by a full content management system. Long time friend to Last Exit, Eyeball NYC was our first commercial success as we produced a video library for their archive – all in QuickTime. The amazing thing was that you could senf the QT skin to someone via email, it would launch and draw the content over the net from our servers. It was a bloody masterpiece and was such a success that we went on to develop several iterations, finally going for an HTML interface and branding it “WaterCooler”. Ken McGorry wrote an article about it back in early 2003 (click here to see the article) and we won several contracts including one with Voltage Video – a traditional tape house/archive – for whom we customized the entire system and built out transcoding infrastructure at their New York city HQ. This enabled their clients to securely long on, and manage all their video based assets and even distribute in any media via Voltages distribution channels. But technology was merely transportation for the creative campaigns we were developing and other fantastic tools started to emerge that we began to use also.

We now utilize a range of solutions as best fit our clients and have built a very successful creative agency. I do want to pin a big fat medal on our collective chests though as (very) early mover in the world of online video. We now continue to exploit all the best aspects of video online and it is now part of almost every campaign we’re involved with. Good job we have the nous to to deploy it properly, effectively and relevantly.

Some examples:

My TiVO Gets Me

Canon

Control Freak

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According to eMarketer, North America is likely to surpass Asia Pacific in mobile gaming revenues due, largely, to the iPhone and the Apps store launch: “Screen Digest said the iPhone would drive mobile gaming revenues to more than $1.5 billion in North America in 2012, up from $930.5 million this year.” Worth a quick peek at this excellent posting I referred to in an earlier blog, that discusses the iPhone’s breakthrough from a developer’s point of view.

This again reinforces the notion that people are:

1. Hungry for content and entertainment on the move (eben if that means sitting on their couch)
2. Eager to maximize the investment they made in their spanking new iPhones
3. Happy to hand over ca$h for content if they’re given a safe, reliable, enjoyable and easy to use method (iTunes in this case).

Right, I’m off to dream up ideas for iPhone games that will make us $Millions.

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OK, my downer on Apple of recent might be a little uncalled for but even as a (very minor) shareholder I’m a little turned off at the moment.  Problems with the the latest operating systems for both desktop computers and servers, applications not being up to par, point releases coming in late and missing features and now the whole furor over the iPhone – sigh, bring me a cup of tea and a biscuit please – have made me feel a little lackadaisical towards the brand.

I do still love my iPone 1 and the latest software release has added utility and entertainment with the apps store but I’m not rushing out to get the new one.  So, I’m going on a little Apple/iPhone holiday.  As we’ve opened a new office over in London and because I’m from there I’m finding more and more excuses to jet across the Atlantic, so I’ve decided to get myself a second phone that I can plug a pay as you go sim card into and I’ve selected the well rates Nokia N-95.  Stacked with applications, 3.5G, GPS with Garmin Navigation and a whopping 5MegaPixel camera.  Most appropriate for a traveling man I reckon

If you think I’ve made a grave mistake, let me know and why.  I’ve really only skimmed over the reviews and I guess I’ll find out soon enough: the phone lands tomorrow!!

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Funny how even though I spent hours and hours and bundles of cash setting up an awesome home entertainment system, that the television remains predominantly my wife’s domain. It’s OK, because mostly I think TV is filled with crap. We enjoy movies together and show photos and home video (thanks to AppleTV), so I get my slice. So last night I took advantage of having the apartment to myself (oh and my dogs) to turn the volume up, crank up the sub-woofer and watch the animated Batman – Gotham Knight. Navigating the AppleTV interface is, as you would expect, perfectly intuitive and quite enjoyable, and when I landed on said movie, I thought that maybe I’d want to own it. However, my options were restricted to: Rent, Rent HD and buy, but with the buy option you only get the standard definition version.

DAMN!!! Content providers are still, unbelievably fighting digital distribution and hiding behind ignorance and paranoia. Their fear being that if they allowed you to buy the HD version, that you would automatically go rip it, burn it, duplicate it and sell it buy the thousands down on New York,s Canal Street , thus financially crippling the studios, networks and anyone else who’s cowering in the ignorance corner.

The fact remains and always will that piracy will always be here but will always be restricted to those making a (small) business out of it or/and are bothered to go through the countless steps to do so. Personally, I have the ability, technology and infrastructure to rip/download movies strip out the DRM and share with my friends and family. But I don’t because I can’t be bothered. I have endless better things to do with my time and sooner charge my time out to clients, who need me, for multiples over the value of a $15 movie.

As we all know, Apple boldly made this step with iTunes much to the derision of the entertainment community who mostly believed it wouldn’t work and that everyone would continue to download music via peer-peer networks. Wrong. Give people the right way to do things in an easy to use manner representing an enjoyable and utilitarian experience and they will (well over a billion songs sold on iTunes so far). Yes, the big record companies are still crying in their milk but their just too big and too old to change quickly. So is it just me, or is it crazy that the studios and networks are still fighting it?

Back to last night and my personal experience: I rented the HD movie for $4.99. I wouldn’t buy the SD version for $10, not with my awesome home entertainment system, no sir!! But, I would have gladly given them $15 of my hard earned moolah for a copy of the HD version, which would have sat very happily on my AppleTV, without ever being ripped, burned and shared with anyone else.

The next in my line of fire is the Telcos – an industry which has basically devolved into a monopoly once again – and the slow development of wireless technology in infrastructure and handsets compared with the rest of the world. Again, we see Apple rock the boat . Regardless of the shambles demonstrated at time of launch for the new 3G iPhone and regardless of what you or I think of the device. The most important aspect has been the incredible approach to digital distribution, here in terms of the developers kit and the application store. Super Monkey Ball has already made approximately $5million for Sega! Bloody incredible. I read a fantastic blog posting regarding mobile app development this morning. Worth a read and further evidence that traditional distribution channels are altering – significantly.

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