Mobile Musings

Join me at the App Developers Conference

andron — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:41:27 +0000

App Developers Conference (ADC) and Hackathon, taking place October 26-27, 2011 in Santa Clara, CA., addresses key components of app development, marketing and revenue on mobile devices and tablets. With an emphasis on cross platform development and revenue strategies, ADC provides key insight for both developers and business professionals.

Attendees will hear from more than 80 expert speakers in 6 conference tracks, including executives and developers from ESPN, Walmart, Pandora, Smule, Samsung, AT&T, Churn Labs, Netflix, Nissan, Barnes & Noble, Nielson, BMW, Pulse, Microsoft, OpenFeint, Qualcomm, Intel Capital and dozens of other companies involved in creating profitable, innovative apps. Online registration expires October 21st. I am speaking at the show. Use the discount code SPEAKERVIP to benefit from an extra $200 off the conference price. Register by Friday, Oct. 21st and the All Access pass is only $495 with the SPEAKERVIP discount code. View complete show details at http://AppDevConf.com/

Conference Keynotes:

ESPN’s Multi-Screen Strategy
John Kosner, Senior Vice President, Digital And Print Media, ESPN
The Pandora App Universe, How We Got Here, How We’ll Grow
Chris Martin, VP of Engineering, Pandora Media, Inc.
Walmart’s Web vs. Apps Strategy
Dion Almaer, VP Mobile Architecture, Walmart.com, and
Ben Galbraith, Vice-President, Mobile Engineering, Walmart Global Ecommerce

Conference Tracks:

Platform Wars
Hardware insights from leading companies, market researchers and top venture capital firms. Plus a look at connected TVs and cars.
Marketing and Revenue
A detailed look at revenue models, marketing techniques, legal issues, and key methods to help you better understand your audience.
Programming and Design
Best practices behind the the most successful develop techniques in UI, Optimum Teams, Metrics, Games, APIs and more.
NOOK Apps Workshop
The technical details for developing applications for NOOK Color and development process from app creation to the app submission.
Kidscreen’s iKids Summit
Hear from the biggest brand-owning companies in kids entertainment talk about their 2012 app strategies and partnership needs.
NAVBuilder Inside Workshop
NAVBuilder Inside provides the simplest and fastest way to add Location-Based Services to your apps for free.

Greece was nice

andron — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:26:03 +0000

Getting away from it all is needed upon occasion. Life has thrown a few curve balls my way lately. All of a sudden I need to really get super organized.

Now we are back. Real life settles in. The work will be there, and it will get done.

Every 60 Seconds on the Internet…

andron — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:18:37 +0000

World Wide Web is growing at rapid pace. On average, more than a billion new pages are added to it every day. To give you an idea of how big world wide web is, our Infographic 60 Seconds will cover some really interesting facts about websites that we use on day-to-day basis.

Did You Know That – In 60 SECONDS

Search engine Google serves more that 694,445 queries

6,600+ pictures are uploaded on Flickr

600 videos are uploaded on YouTube videos, amounting to 25+ hours of content

695,000 status updates, 79,364 wall posts and 510,040 comments are published on Social Networking site Facebook

70 New domains are registered

168,000,000+ emails are sent

320 new accounts and 98,000 tweets are generated on Social Networking site Twitter

iPhone applications are downloaded more than13,000 times

20,000 new posts are published on Micro-blogging platform tumbler

Popular web browser FireFox is downloaded more than 1700 times

Popular blogging platform WordPress is downloaded more than 50 times

WordPress Plugins aredownloaded more than 125 times

100 accounts are created on professional networking site LinkedIn

40 new Questions are asked on YahooAnswers.com

100+ questions are asked on Answers.com

1 new article is published on Associated Content, the world’s largest source of community-created content

1 new definition is added on UrbanDictionary.com

1,200+ new ads are created on Craigslist

370,000+ minutes of voice calls done by Skype users

13,000+ hours of music streaming is done by personalized Internet radio provider Pandora

1,600+ reads are made on Scribd, the largest social reading publishing company

My shortest international trip

andron — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 22:42:06 +0000

I was booked for a flight to London. It would have had me out of the country for 39 hours. Turns out that the return flight would force me to miss a meeting. This is my fault.

I had sent off my dates to the travel agency and they booked the flight and sent a conformation. Unfortunately when I reviewed the travel itinerary, I checked the times but not the dates. turns out the dates was the thing that was wrong. The change trimmed off 24 hours from the trip.

Looking for the silver lining, I recalled that my previous shortest business trip of out the country was more than 10 years ago. The change trimmed off 24 hours from this trip bringing me closer to the length of the previous winner. At this point I was excited. I really have a chance to break the record of my 36 hour business trip to São Paulo.

That trip I took while at Ericsson. A whirlwind tour of what was happening at Ericsson locations in South America, was little more than a 36 hour blur of server farms and one trip to a grocery store to find Froot Loops with the packaging in Spanish or Portuguese. I’m not sure why it was so short.

Back to today, landing in London, I was held up by the Passport control but did make it to the meeting before the end. Looks like the relationship saw our commitment at least. I spent 16 hours in the air, and 7 hours on the ground.

New features in iOS5 Safari

andron — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 09:41:02 +0000

iOS5 is not out yet, however the keynote gave us lots to review anyway. From the keynote here is a round up of the new features reported in the keynote to Safari in iOS5.

Reading list: Read it Later functionality built in to Safari now.
Tabbed Browsing: Finally easier to switch between sites you have open in Safari
Safari Reader: A nighmare to designers and advertisers, this feature simplifies the web page into just title, images and text. While this removes distractions that some sites design in it also removes ads, the bread and butter of sites.

There are also several system wide changes that enhance Safari.

Tweet: iOS 5 wide integration of twitter let’s you share pages faster with your followers.
Shortcuts: turn RTFM into what it actually stands for
More to come..

I don’t use a mac as my primary tool for work, but when I have time, I do use it on the weekend. Seems to me like some iOS features have moved to the Mac. It’s fascinating that the simpler apps are trickling up, while features are added. It’s the iPadification of the Mac. Many UX and UI features that started in iOS have moved up like: the App store, simplified app UX selection, : all of these started in iOS and have moved to OSX.

I’m sure there are a lot more that we will discover when iOS5 is out

Disclaimer: when it comes to apple things can change, if they do, I’ll change them here too, but no accuracy is guaranteed

What

Solution Focused Communication

andron — Tue, 31 May 2011 17:51:34 +0000

Sometimes when I’m working out what goes wrong with a discussion, I’ve had trouble figuring out where things went wrong. Today this phrase came into my mind: Solution Focused Communication. This really got me thinking about how to have the most successful conversations*. What are things that get in the way of that? Here are some of the things that I recognize get in the way.

Having to be right or validated by the other person
Surface distractions – things that are similar to the subject at hand but discussing it does not get to the problem that needs to be uncovered and solved
Emotions – one of the most difficult things to get around is to look at the problem from as analytical viewpoint that does not let feelings detract from the problem that needs to be solved

I’m not sure where this idea will lead, but I hope to improve my communication skills.

*Successful does not mean that I succeed in convincing the other person, rather that both of us leave feeling that we were able to learn and share our ideas. If this means that there are actions to be taken, those should be clear and agreed upon.

Author Review almost done

andron — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:49:02 +0000

One last chapter to go, then it’s off to the printers. We are going through Author Review currently. Janine Warner has been a great guide as I have learned what it means to be an Author. Her mantra is: I like signing them better than I like writing them. So true.

Future Of Mobile Tagging Report

andron — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:13:29 +0000

Great Presentation on the Future Of Mobile Tagging. Covers bar-codes to Augmented Reality and social integration. See the slide share after the jump, Or download the PDF.

PSFK presents Future Of Mobile Tagging Report

Or download the PDF

V.gd Leads the Pack

andron — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:53:23 +0000

My favorite URL shortner is now v.gd, not only is it quick and small but is truly an ethical URL shortening service. The service is supported by MEMSET®, and they also offer ‘is.gd’ – a slightly longer shortener. The .gd top level domain that is.gd is allocated under is owned by Grenada, a Caribbean island country and Commonwealth realm. Something important to keep in mind as shortening services that end in .ly have been seized by Libyan NIC because the content of websites fell outside of Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law.

They offer shortening in several flavors:

Standard: http://v.gd/irXfvs
Lower case: http://v.gd/8t6r1p
Lower case pronounceable: http://v.gd/zavonu
Set your own shorter URLs: http://v.gd/forLee
is.gd works the same way: http://is.gd/forLee

Wonderfully you can also have them log stats for your links

Log statistics for this link

These services are great for SMS, Twitter, or for making URL’s bearable to enter into phones.

Writing Phase Done

andron — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 20:22:07 +0000

The final chapters of iPhone and iPad Web Design for Dummies has been submitted. The next phase of the process involves the editors and revising as we work toward the final manuscript. Amazon’s description after the jump.

A full-color guide to designing top-notch Web sites for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch!

Apple’s trio of mobile devices the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch are nearly unstoppable; no other advanced mobile platform comes close to the number of users they boast. However, many of the popular Web technologies are not compatible with the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch and that’s where this book comes in. Focused on creating a captivating mobile Web experience, this straightforward-but-fun guide shows you how to use HTML5, CSS3, AJAX, and JQuery to produce highly interactive Web sites for these sophisticated devices. The author duo takes you on a journey of designing for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch from start to finish. You’ll discover how to plan the perfect Web experience for a mobile device, add interactivity and multimedia, test and optimize your creations, and publish and market your final design.

Offers a full-color introduction to designing Web sites for the immensely popular iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch using HTML5 and CSS3
Teaches you how to add interactivity with AJAX, JQuery, and JavaScript
Addresses optimizing images and multimedia; combining a Web site with a mobile application; creating iPhone and iPad designs for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal; and adding mobile commerce
Highlights ways to test your site and then publish and market your new creation

Discover the exciting possibilities of designing Web sites for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch with iPhone & iPad Web Design For Dummies!

Nice to see that.