Nokia Sports Tracker, Unicef and lots of running

Just over a year ago I started my own get fit program by going to the gym on a regular basis. At the same time I discovered Nokia Sports Tracker and for the first time in my life I actually started running! Of course I used to play football lots and that involved running after a ball but this was running for the sake of running - something I'd always viewed as a masocistic activity. Nokia Sports Tracker actually gave me a geek reason to start running and from there I've actually started enjoying it.

So this weekend everything culminates in me running a half marathon for Unicef in the Royal Parks Half which plots a 20k route around the central London parks. Its nice to see Nokia are one of the key sponsors, although its a shame they don't seem to be tying Nokia Sports Tracker into the event more. It would be good to see them push Sports Tracker a little more as its a great tool and has been around for well over a year now. Although I have a few gripes with the current version, the core functionality of being able to track progress via GPS and then share this with a google maps mashup is great.

The Royal Parks Half starts this sunday at 10 am. If anyone wants to sponsor me and help out Unicef that would be great and really appreciated: http://www.justgiving.com/nickgerig

I'll be using Sports Tracker to track my progress live on race day - so you should be able to go here and see live tracking data.

the mobile soup

There's some great commentary on the mex blog about the state of operator and manufacturer consumer stances. You can read it here http://www.mobileuserexperience.com/?p=574

My take on this is that its all just part of the increasingly rapid shift in roles that is inevitable when a market is structured ineffectively. The whole web, mobile and other convergence is picking up pace. Operators and manufacturers have held all the cards for years and have failed spectacularly to produce any real consumer services.

Of course there are regional differences, Operators in Japan have taken full advantage of their position and turned themselves into real service facilitators, so the consumer is happy - they don't buy just a handset they buy a specific service laden handset targeted at all their needs. In Europe and the US service standards are so low that operators have to rely upon manufacturer provided USPs to create some kind of crap marketing campaign. It can only become increasingly easy for manufacturers and software service providers to take over.

Recently we've seen 02 and Orange suddenly become broadband and portal providers. This is really reminicent of the early internet days where models like MSN, AOL, Lycos etc were the norm. This is almost like a last desperate act of saying look we really are service providers honest, look we do email, news, broadband,etc. I'd be really suprised if any of them pull this off in the longrun. Even if they do, I think they miss the point - all anyone ever wanted was to have great services on mobile phones.

So I understand its a strategic move to counter the invasion of the internet services provided by the Googles and Yahoos, and you can't just have a mobile presence thats true. But that's just delaying the inevitable, they cannot compete at this level and their history proves that. The real battle will be between the handset manufacturers and the internet giants. We've already seen Nokia in particular start to move into multiplatform software, creating the potential to compete with the likes of Google, Apple, etc.

I think the interesting move will be when an operator makes the move to being just a facilitator and helps consumers get the services they want. That's when we'll see some really great things happening on mobile - ultimately the consumer doesn't care who dominates as long as the end result is good, something we are still far from with mobile. When will Google buy a controlling stake in an operator I wonder? :)

Opera Mobile and Flash

Seems like Opera for mobile is now actually integrating some form of Flash within the browser. There was some tentative announcement back at the MWC that it would support Flash Lite 3, I guess this is the first step.

http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/


I think what Opera do is just hook into whatever 'player' is present on the device, so they implement a standard api. However, that can only really lead to a pretty fragmented implementation. Also not sure why its even worth implementing Flash Lite 2.1, flash player 7 is understandable for the video.

My first test with a Nokia N95 8Gb crashed the browser when it tried to access Flash content, but to be fair that has Flash Lite 3 which isn't listed in the tech spec- interesting to see if it works on any Flash video content (Flash 7 is listed as supported - I pressume for windows mobile).

open source cell database

Theres a few 'open' databases out there to find the location of a phone cell. None of them really inspire much confidence. Recently the big players have been showing off their own databases, for example google and yahoo who use cell id for user location services. So its about time that there was one global open database to rench away the money goggled control operators have over their cell data.

I've recently donated some extensive cell data to opencellid and hopefully it can expand as people try and build out location services. Theres also a few clients to download if you want to contribute.

BBC iPlayer moves on to Wii... what next?

Just read that the iPlayer is now moving onto Wii. Its great to see the BBC pushing it so aggressively. I wonder if its using Flash technology? If it is I imagine they'd have to upgrade the Flash Player to support on2, it would certainly make sense if they could because they get good enough DRM

So where will it go next? Having just got back from overtheair its clear the BBC love mobile and want to embrace it, but they have to be conscious of the mass market. Flash Lite 3 would be an easy port as they'd really just have to change the UI of their existing iPlayer, but the penetration is low at the moment. What other options are there that have a rich UI, DRM and a long term roadmap? Will be interesting to see just how far iPlayer penetrates mobile.

Update: I've just read an interesting post by Darren Waters that seems to confirm the iPlayer roadmap with Flash as a technology base and how that crosses over to consoles too. Looks like the Wii will be moving onto Flash 8 soon :)

MAD UK user group night

Tonight I'll be heading down to the Adobe Consulting offices where Mark Doherty will be showing a few of the Adobe hidden mobile gems, namely the European Flash Cast projects and some Flash Lite video.

If you're in London then I thoroughly recommend coming down. This will be a great opportunity to meet some of the EMEA mobile team, see some of the opportunities ahead and meet some of the Flash Lite community.

details are:

Date : 29th Feb, 2008

Time : 7pm - 9pm

Venue : At the Adobe Regents Park office
12 Park Crescent,
London,
W1B 1PH,
United Kingdom

UK MAD

Nokia Flash Lite 3 Memory Bonanza!

As various other people have reported, the latest version of firmware for the N95 8Gb adds support for Flash Lite 3. Its great to see Flash Lite 3 getting out into the wild finally, and perhaps earlier than has been the case with other Flash Lite version changes.

So I have upgraded my N95 8Gb and have been playing around with the implementation of Flash Lite 3. There aren't many changes to the standalone player except for the available memory which has been increased massively!

In previous deployments of Flash Lite the total runtime memory available has ranged from 1024 to 2048 kb. The developer version of Flash Lite 3 released by Adobe for developers to test applications had a default memory allocation of 3296 kb. The in-built Flash Lite 2 player on the N95 has 2297 kb, so it was a nice suprise to see the Nokia implementation of Flash Lite 3 has a jaw dropping 16632 kb of runtime memory!!! Amazing! So now we can load and playback full length mp3 files, for example. Of course, I didn't trust the system reporting of available memory so I checked it quickly by loading and playing a 4mb mp3 file. It worked perfectly - remember this would normally use up 8mb of memory.

Not sure why there is such a difference - maybe its to do with the changes in the way memory is managed in the latest versions of Symbian 9.2?