The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Posts tagged Mobile Development
Bemoko brings the Doha Tribeca Film Festival to mobile phones
Oct 29th
UK-based mobile web experts, bemoko Ltd, have used the bemokoLive mobile development platform to create the mobile website for this year’s Doha Tribeca Film Festival (DTFF) which begins today.
Optimised to work with any mobile phone, the Doha Tribeca Film Festival mobile website will be live for the duration of the event and for 12 months afterwards. Mat Diss, founder of bemoko said: “;From the mobile website you can watch trailers for films on your phone, find out where and when films are being screened and create your own personalised festival agenda. Content is taken from the DTFF blog, twitter stream and flickr feeds, enabling visitors to keep up to date with all the latest news and reviews, wherever they are.”
The site was created using bemokoLive, a unique development platform that lets web designers create mobile sites quickly and easily using standard XHTML. Because bemokoLive recognises the characteristics of a phone visiting a web site, the site will display on any mobile phone regardless of operating system or screen size. This removes the need to write mobile sites for each type of phone, meaning mobile websites can be live for a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods of creating sites for mobile.
As VIP guests at DTFF will be receiving iPod Touch devices which link to the mobile website, bemoko has used the powerful features of the bemokoLive platform to easily create a feature-rich version of the mobile site for iPhone and iPod touch users without having to write the entire site again for the iPhone. Special features for the iPhone version of the site include ‘Apple style’ sliding page transitions, film trailer carousels and touch sensitive maps with pinch zoom and touch scrolling.
DTFF Executive Director Amanda Palmer said, “The website is a great tool for visitors to take part in cultural exchanges of ideas and to engage with groundbreaking filmmakers. To be able to do this from any mobile phone is a huge advantage to our many visitors who will come from all over the World.”
Mat Diss continued: “The Doha Tribeca Film Festival has recognised the power of the mobile Internet as a tool that should be accessible to everyone, regardless of which make or model of phone they have. bemokoLive means that visitors can experience a multimedia experience on their phone that compliments the event.”
-ends-
About Doha Tribeca Film Festival
From October 29 to November 1, 2009, filmmakers and shakers from around the world will be welcomed to the stunning festival hub, at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA). In this launch year, DTFF is curating a program slate of 30 feature films, highlighting internationally acclaimed Arab films, plus the best of Hollywood, Bollywood, family films, documentaries, animation and world cinema.
DTFF is a unique partnership between Qatar Museum Authority (QMA) and New York’s Tribeca Film Festival. On QMA’s side is Chair, Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, QMA’s CEO Abdulla Al Najjar and DTFF Executive Director Amanda Palmer. On Tribeca’s side, are the festival founders, acclaimed Hollywood producer Jane Rosenthal, entrepreneur Craig Hatkoff, and actor, Robert De Niro.
Visit http://dtff.bemoko.com
Netsize publish handset tech specs via API
Sep 26th
Link: Netsize Makes Handset Technical Specs Available Via Web API
Mobile messaging aggregator Netsize has launched a new mobile handset technical database.
The service, called mDevices, contains details of handsets, their capabilities, features and functions – and best of all can be accessed remotely in real time via a web-based API.
According to Netsize marketing director Renaud Menerat, “Optimising mobile browsing experience and product merchandising according to devices capabilities may sound trivial or obvious. However with close to 2,500 mobile handsets in the European market and couple hundred new models coming out each year, this information update can quickly become a nightmare for brands and merchants and be of crucial necessity if they wish to propose their consumers a compelling shopping experience on mobile”.
HansaWorld release E-series development environment
Aug 21st
If you’ve ever thought of developing an app for the Nokia E-series smart phone handset range but have been put off by how complicated Symbian coding is, or don’t have the budget to develop a proof of concept, it might be worth checking out SmartApps – a new development environment just released by enterprise software company HansaWorld.
According to their Chief Exec Karl Bohin (pictured), “Smart phones have become powerful computers in their own right. We’ve matched that with a simple, accessible development environment that will enable people to create their own applications for E-series phones.”
Bohlin says SmartApps is an usually easy development tool: “Until now many applications have been too difficult or too expensive to write. Now just about anybody can use SmartApps to create fast database applications, from private individuals to people with new business ideas and professional programmers.”
The development tool is free to download and use – and developers will be paid for applications that find users. “We’ve created an absolutely transparent business model,” says Bohlin. “Anybody can download SmartApps to develop anything they want and publish it. End users pay HansaWorld to use the applications, and in turn we pay developers.”
“We’re hoping the tool will trigger an explosion of new application development for the E-series phones,” adds Bohlin. “There are tens of thousands of possible applications. We’re looking forward to seeing what people come up with.”
Bohlin anticipates two primary categories of use for SmartApps. “Firstly, people will want to create mobile versions of existing applications like timesheets, expenses claims and travel logs,” he says. “But we also expect to see many new applications that are only possible with a mobile device.”
“For example, imagine a technician who is called out to repair a piece of equipment at a customer site and finds the problem can’t be fixed immediately. He could photograph the problem with his phone, type in the serial number, add GPS co-ordinates for the location and upload the entire package for his colleagues.”
“This is just the beginning,” says Bohlin. “We can see exciting possibilities for real estate agents to send individualised portfolios to their clients’ mobiles, for the creation of online marketplaces and for news feeds, to cite just the business uses. There are also many private uses, for example for communities and interest groups to share information including pictures, comments, GPS data about anything from restaurants to birdwatching sites to crime hotspots.”
ROK Acquires Blubox
Jun 25th
Mobile entertainment company ROK have announced today they’ve acquired data optimisation and compression specialists Blubox Software.
Commenting on the acquisition, Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman of ROK said “Blubox have created the most powerful, user-friendly and original compression technologies for the management of digital imagery and data files that we have yet seen and, with our core interest being in mobile phone applications, we know there is a massive potential, worldwide, for this technology in the mobile phone space in addition to, and in conjunction with, the online service.”
If you’ve never heard of Blubox before, here’s the scoop. They’ve got technology that typically compressed JPEG images by about 80% – which means you can upload those pics faster from your phone, and use less data in the process. They’ve also got a nifty PC application that allows you to manage, encrypt, upload and compress your photos.
The implications for this sort of technology being used on mobiles is potentially huge. Even though phones nowadays are coming with increasing amounts of storage, the resolution of digital cameras on mobiles is also increasing – so space is still at a premium. Factor in the average £3/meg data charge, and you could quite easily splash a tenner just uploading a handful of photos. By reducing the file size by up to 80%, you could benefit from less memory usage, faster upload and splash a lot less cash on getting the photos up to your favourite photo website, like Flickr.
Breaking news: Nuance buys VoiceSignal for $293m
May 15th
There’s been a few postings recently on here about Nuance, who are a leader in the speech recognition arena. Dave at Schwartz PR has just been in touch with the rather hot piece of news that Nuance has just bought VoiceSignal, another company in the same arena.
According to Nuance’s chairman and CEO, Paul Ricci:
“Today, more than two billion people worldwide rely on mobile phones to stay connected, informed and productive. We see an expanding opportunity in helping consumers to use the powerful capabilities of their phones and to access the array of content and services available on the mobile Web”.
“We understand how to unlock the extraordinary potential of the mobile experience with speech. VoiceSignal’s roster of solutions, language experience, relationships and talented employees will help Nuance deliver on the promise of the mobile lifestyle for consumers, device manufacturers, carriers and mobile Web content providers.”
And this is what Rich Geruson, CEO of VoiceSignal, had to say:
“By combining forces with Nuance, we can accelerate the realization of our common vision for mobile handsets: to eliminate the input bottleneck from small, mobile device keypads and make accessible to users the full power of mobile devices”.
“Joining Nuance’s assets with our capabilities in mobile positions the company well in the exciting, dynamic market of mobile search, where a voice interface will be the key to unlock its potential.”
The combined company has got some big plans in the world of voice synthesis and recognition, including voice-based mobile search, speech to SMS/MMS, voice-activated dialing, and all sorts of other goodies. Definitely one to watch in the coming months!
55% of Americans would buy a Google or Yahoo mobile
May 12th
Link: Poll: Majority Would Buy Google Or Yahoo-Branded Mobile Device – Mobile Blog – InformationWeek
Interesting figures here, courtesy of a study by The Equs Group, which shows how strong the Google and Yahoo brands are when it comes to associating them with mobile devices.
A recent study by The Equs Group shows that 55.5% of U.S. consumers would purchase a mobile device made by Google or Yahoo if such hardware existed. That’s a lot of trust in brands that have no history in actually designing, engineering and manufacturing mobile devices.
Is mobile search that important to people? According to Equs’ numbers, yes. Nearly 69% of respondents regularly use mobile search tools on their phones. There must be a perception that Yahoo or Google branded devices would offer a superior search experience.
Looks like the traditional big players such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola may have some serious competition if the likes of Google and Yahoo get into the market. With convergence being the buzz word on everyones lips lately, it’s only a matter of time before the dot com and cellular markets collide – and there’s sure to be some casualties.
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